Proxy
by AHS
Summary: Voltaire once said that history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes, and Jackson Rippner's history is no different.
1. 26 November 1987

A/N: Just a small author's note this time. What you'll see over the next few months is the edited version of the trilogy appearing on The first, of course, is Proxy, and once it is finished, there will be a short hiatus, then the posting of Bejerot's Diagnosis. Every Wednesday and Saturday, edited chapters will be posted.

Here goes!

---

'You'll fucking stay out here until--' his father shouted, blue eyes staring wildly at the snow-covered landscape. 'Until I fucking say you can come back into the fucking house!'

With a grunt, he tightened his grasp on the boy he had writhing behind him, making the boy thrash more as his dark brown hair finally started pulling out of his head at the scalp. One yank forward and the man let go of him, letting him fall onto the snow. The boy laid there for a moment, curled into himself, before the man bent over him with the back of his hand held up like he was going to slap him -- the boy jumped to his feet quickly, rubbing his scalp with inadvertent tears stinging his eyes.

'Dad,' he said softly, tears running down his face. 'Dad, it's really cold out here.'

'Jack, you'll stay in this place, and you won't move,' he said dangerously, shoving a finger into his son's face before speaking in a terrifying half-voice. 'And if you make a noise, any little fucking noise, I swear to God I will kill you.'

Jackson's toes curled in the snow and he shivered as he brought his arms up to cross his chest. As he watched his father's back retreat into the house, he started to lose feeling in his feet; when his father slammed the door, icicles went stabbing down into the fresh snow, and for all intents and purposes he should have jumped in surprise, but instead Jackson tipped his head forward with a dark look crossing his face. Willing his frozen feet forward, he crunched across the knee-deep snow with his eyes set on the wood-handled, rusty hatchet half-buried in a log underneath the stairs that led up to the second floor of the house. Wind blustered around him, sending snow up from the ground to meet with the newly falling snow at Jackson's face, but he was looking so intently at the tool that it didn't faze him.

He stood for several long moments, leaning against one of the support beams under the stairs as his eyes half-closed and his body reacted to the wind chill -- his pyjama pants were soaked completely through and the t-shirt wasn't faring much better. Overcoming his body's reaction, he reached out with shaky hands and clasped frozen fingers around the wood. The snow melted quickly under his touch, and with a deliberate yank, he pulled it from the icy log. Looking slowly at the door, he hulked over to it and sent the blade of the axe through the glass, which elicited a scream from his mother and an angry growl from his father. Reaching through the glass, he undid the lock and pushed open the door, stepping back into the heat with a bloody arm and the other hand holding the axe laxly to his side.

'What do you think you're doing?' his father demanded, standing up from the table in the kitchen with a fork held menacingly in front of him. 'Get back into the fucking yard, and put the axe back where you found it, you little piece of shit!'

'Michael...' Alice said, but her look seemed to contradict the sympathetic statement. 'Jackson Rippner, you heard your father. You're being punished.'

Softly closing the door behind him, Jackson took a few hesitant, sloshy steps forward, cutting his feet on the shards of glass covering the floor. Michael was about to open his mouth again when Jackson looked up with wide eyes and suddenly swung the axe, connecting it with the left-side tendons of his father's neck. When the man fell, Jackson followed him to the ground, hitting him savagely and splattering blood all over the area despite his mother's terrified screams.

'Jack!' she screamed as she stood, pushing over her chair.

With an animalistic glint in his eyes, Jackson stopped with his arms held above his head and turned to look at his mother, who was backing up against the counter with a shaking hand over her mouth. She was grasping at the drawer pull to retrieve a knife, and that just enraged him more. He stood and walked around his father's absolutely mutilated body, slipping a bit on a pool of blood as he made his way over to his mother. After cutting her delicate fingers on a few blades, she'd managed to find the butcher's knife and was now brandishing shakily it in front of her as her blood-splattered son made his way to her.

'I swear to you, Jack, I will--'

There was a spray of blood across the window behind her, and everything fell silent.


	2. 13 March 1988

'_No, Jackson's a good boy. A little quiet, not too many friends, but he'd never do something like that...'_

Blue eyes scanned the landscape as the passenger train sped by the partially frozen Hudson River. The ground on either side of the river was covered in several feet of snow, so it had been slow going because the tracks were considered relatively hazardous, but they had almost reached their destination of Yonkers.

_'His father was never home. Well, until his business in New York City closed. He wasn't very friendly, never participated in school events. Neither did his mother though...'_

The train had slowed again, and although Jackson thought it was because they were arriving at the station, there wasn't enough around them to warrant stopping. Leaning on his right elbow, the eleven-year-old tried to reach up to scratch his nose with his left hand just to have the hand stopped after about a foot. The handcuffs that attached him to the armrest made a loud rattling noise and he could hear his social worker lowering her magazine in response.

_'I lived next door to them for ten years... my daughter used to baby-sit Jackson when he was really young. They started leaving him home alone when he was about five though, as soon as he started kindergarten. Well, no, we didn't call the police about it... is that illegal?'_

Jackson sighed, his breath making a little fog circle against the cold window. In the reflection, he could see the social worker look down at the magazine once more, so he dropped his forehead against the window and sniffled a bit. After a moment, he leaned back in his chair and looked at the open, forgotten book on the tray table in front of him.

_'When we got to the scene, the parents had already been dead for at least three days. Michael Rippner was on the kitchen floor next to the table with his face unrecognisable because of the trauma inflicted by the axe, which was found next to Alice Rippner. She had been hit on the side of the neck with the same axe, and bled to death rather than suffering from blunt trauma. We think she may have been awake for at least fifteen minutes after her son attacked her. The boy? He was sleeping upstairs...'_

'Sorry for the delay, folks,' came a voice over the loudspeaker, and all of the passengers looked up except Jackson. 'There are a few obstacles that we're working on clearing off, but once we get the tracks clean, it should only be about ten minutes to Yonkers.'

The social worker sighed and shifted in her chair, obviously ready to be rid of her charge. Slipping her magazine into the pocket of the chair in front of her, she leaned back and looked past Jackson to the icy landscape. For a moment, she was almost tempted to strike up some conversation with the boy, but quite honestly, she found him terrifying. He reached out with a pale hand and closed the book in front of him, a hardbound tome called _Hostages to Fortune_.

_'As the judge presiding over this case, after testimony from both sides, I believe that Jackson Rippner's parenticide was completely in self-defence, an eventuality caused by constant mental and physical abuse from his parents...'_

There was something deliberate about every movement the boy made, she realised as she watched him. The psychiatrists who had been assigned to his case made a lot of mention of his obsessive-compulsive tendencies, but this was the first time she'd seen it in action. His pale hands brushed the cover of the book delicately as he worked on centring it perfectly on the table, and once it seemed to his liking, he stared at it before picking off a dark hair that was clinging to the binding, smiling lightly until he noticed that she was looking at him. Turning slowly, he looked at her emotionlessly with those icy eyes, and she felt a chill run down her spine. No wonder all of the children at his school had taken to calling him Jack the Ripper.

_'It is the decision of this court to release Jackson Rippner into the care of his aunt, Edith Liddell of Schenectady.'_

Jackson's handcuffs jarred loudly against the armrest as the train built up speed once more. Leaning over, the social worker started collecting a few things that were under the seat, looking over at Jackson's feet, which were dangling a good few inches off of the floor. Such a tiny boy, thin and pale, seemingly harmless and weak, and yet he'd managed to kill both of his parents. When asked by his frantic neighbours about what happened, he'd seemed more concerned with the state of the kitchen than the condition of his parents. The psychiatrists believed it may have had something to do with denial of his act, but his aunt assured them that he'd been that way all of his life.

_'Hello, 911? This is Edith Liddell. I have an emergency. My... my nephew has a knife, and he's trying to kill my son. We're in a different room than him now, but my son is bleeding and we need help! Please, please send someone, fast!'_

So now, on his eleventh birthday, Jackson was being transported from a domestic life in Schenectady to a supervised group home in Orangeburg—Rockland Children's Psychiatric Centre. Considered to be dangerous since the attack on his cousin a few days earlier, he was always supposed be restrained and was not permitted to use silver cutlery. The psychiatrists at the centre were excited to hear of his coming—they believed from reading about the boy that he could help them on their research regarding juvenile dissociative identity disorder, juvenile generalised anxiety disorder, and juvenile obsessive-compulsive disorder. In other words, he was 'a great find.'

_'Yes, Mrs Liddell, we know exactly where to place Jackson. He'll be very safe and very happy, and he'll be no threat to others.'_

The train finally stopped at the nearly snowbound Yonkers station and his social worker quickly undid the handcuffs from the armrest and slipped one cuff onto her own wrist. Grabbing the meagre bag of Jackson's things from the overhead rack, she led him out to the platform where she knew orderlies from the Centre would be waiting. Their feet crunched on fresh snow, and a moment later the social worker was surprised to feel Jackson suddenly grab her around the forearm fearfully. Before she had a chance to look down and talk to him, however, a burly man walked up.

'Is this Jackson Rippner?'

'Yes,' she said, reaching down a hand to push him forward. 'He's an escape artist, so you better be prepared.'

'We are,' said the man with dark certainty as he led them to the edge of the platform and down a flight of stairs. Waiting in the car park was an ambulance and as they came up behind it, another orderly jumped out of the driver's seat and walked around to open the back. The social worker was taken aback by the gurney waiting inside.

'Is that really necessary?' she asked in a small voice. 'He may be really good at getting away, but he's only eleven.'

'State law,' the second orderly replied tersely as he helped them up into the ambulance. 'Anyone being transferred to a psychiatric hospital must be in restraint.'

For a split second after she removed the handcuffs, the social worker was convinced that Jackson was going to run away, but the orderlies were fast; they grabbed him and laid him out on the bed so that he had no choice but to stay with them. They swiftly closed the padded restraints around his wrists, ankles, and waist—all were nearly too big for the tiny boy—and then stepped out of the back, pulling the social worker with them before they slammed the doors shut on Jackson. After a short farewell, the two men got into the cab and soon they were driving away, leaving the social worker standing in the snow alone before she moved back towards the train to New York City.

By the time they arrived at the psychiatric hospital a half-hour later, snow had started falling once again. One of the orderlies carried Jackson from the ambulance and into the building; Jackson, still frozen from the cold of the back of the ambulance, didn't fight against the man's warm arms but rather curled slightly into him as the blustery snow melted on his back. The man, who had a couple of children at home, felt sorry for the boy, but experience at the hospital told him that he was just the same as any other child who feigned innocence. Regardless, he just held him closer as the nurses opened the door for him.

'Jackson Rippner,' the orderly said as he kept a firm grip on Jackson.

'Dr Thomas is waiting for him,' said the nurse behind the counter, ticking off a box on her schedule. 'She's with the other children in the game room.'

The orderly nodded and walked down the hallway, slipping Jackson onto the floor as they reached a door with tempered glass. Jackson, short for his age at four feet, four inches, craned his head up to look in the door, his arms tight across his chest as he shivered a bit. The man opened the door and led him to a middle-aged doctor with long, dark hair tied back in a ponytail. With a smile, she bent down and put a hand on his upper arm.

'Hello, Jackson, I'm Dr Thomas. How are you today?'

Jackson stared at her for a few long moments, so she just made a little laughing noise and stood, pulling him to her legs with a hand running through his hair as she spoke to the orderly. Looking about the room with a great amount of distaste, Jackson tried to size up the other children. There were seven others watching television on the other side of the room, three boys and four girls, and they all seemed to be unwilling to mingle with one another. A couple of nurses were sitting near the group of children, neither seeming too concerned with their behaviour. As the orderly left, Jackson turned his attention to the door before being pushed towards the other children by Dr Thomas. After turning off the television, she smiled at the group.

'Children, this is Jackson Rippner. He just came down here from Albany.'

'Jackson Rippner?' snorted one of the children. 'Sounds like Jack the Ripper.'

Jackson bristled and tensed against Dr Thomas's touch, but she kept him firmly in place. 'Patrick, that's not very nice. Apologise to Jackson.'

Patrick rolled his eyes. 'Sorry, Jack.'

A couple of the children laughed, pressing their hands against their mouths as they did so. Jackson glared at each of them in turn, which made of one of the laughing girls gasp. Dr Thomas squeezed Jackson's arm.

'Jackson, why don't you introduce yourself to the group.'

She pushed him forward and he stumbled a bit, which made the children laugh again, but he regained his composure quickly.

'My name is Jackson—it's _never_ Jack,' he said, coldness dripping from each syllable. 'My parents are dead and I was sent here today because my aunt decided she didn't want me in her house anymore.'

'How old are you, Jackson?' prodded Dr Thomas.

'I turned eleven today,' he spat, giving her a glare as he frowned.

'I wouldn't want you in my house either,' said one of the other boys smugly.

'She didn't want me there anymore because I tried to kill my cousin,' Jackson replied with a grin before Dr Thomas could intervene.

Silence fell over the group and the girl who had gasped earlier looked between Jackson and the boy before breaking down in tears. A nurse went over and led her out of the room without a word. A couple of the other children shifted uncomfortably in their seats, none of them looking Jackson in the face.

'I killed my parents too, but it was much more of a Lizzie Borden murder than a Jack—'

'Jackson!' hissed the doctor, her immense displeasure frightfully apparent in her voice.

'Sorry, Dr Thomas,' he said, turning around to give her an innocent smile.

The doctor looked over at the other nurse who was in the room before continuing. 'Everyone, please introduce yourselves to Jackson. Amy, why don't you start?'

In response, the Asian girl the doctor spoke to shook her head quickly, rubbing scarred arms nervously as she avoided Jackson's eyes. He laughed at her and she looked up at him with tears stinging her eyes, which just made him laugh louder until Dr Thomas came up behind him and tried to cover his mouth with her hand.

'Stop it, you fucking nut case!' said a tall, well-developed girl as she scooted over to Amy on the couch, putting her arms around the other girl.

'Paula!' said the doctor, pressing her hand hard against Jackson's lips as he continued laughing. 'Jackson, sit down.'

Immediately, Jackson fell silent and walked over to sit on the couch next to Amy, who scooted closer to Paula to get away from him. The children all looked at him unhappily, but it was one of the boys that spoke first.

'I don't want to room with him, Dr Thomas. Please don't make me room with him.'

'All of the boys will be rooming together,' she said before pointing at the boy, who was opening his mouth again. 'No ifs, ands, or buts.'

The boy closed his mouth and gave Jackson a dirty look that was returned in kind.


	3. 11 December 1990

A/N: Woo, classes start today. Developmental Psychology and Human Anatomy & Physiology. Phbt, I've got these _handled_.

---

'The kids from room eight haven't come down for breakfast,' said a quite fidgety aide to the head nurse.

'Room eight?' the head nurse repeated without even looking at the aide. 'I saw Louis and Campbell.'

'No, the other two boys, Jackson and Patrick.'

The head nurse paused, dropping the file in her hand to the desk of the nurse's station. 'Jackson's supposed to be under special watch, you know that. Why isn't there someone watching him?'

The aide just stood there with her mouth open, so without even waiting for an answer, Nurse Douglas left the station and started out towards the building where their most unpredictable inmate was being held. Although the psychiatrists had managed to make him drop the early habit of head-butting anyone who made fun of him by calling him Jack the Ripper, at least twice a month he got into fights with other children or tried to escape, even if he was in a straitjacket. Unlike most of the patients, he was never a danger to himself, but almost constantly a danger to others (he'd done everything from trying to asphyxiate a roommate with a pillow to convincing a girl to stab herself in the neck with a fork). Worst of all, he failed to show any remorse for his actions—he never even lied about doing them, which caused the lead psychiatrist to devote amazing amounts of time to the study of the boy.

She came to the door to Jackson's room and opened it almost hesitantly, jumping as she nearly ran into Jackson, who was looking up at her with a devious smile, those cold eyes amused by something.

'Good morning, Nurse Douglas.'

'Where's Patrick?'

Jackson's smile widened and he tipped his head a little at her. 'He hasn't shown up for breakfast yet?'

'Jackson...' she said dangerously, grabbing him by the wrist and pulling him deeper into the room with her. 'Oh... oh Jesus.'

Frantically, she pressed the nurse call button on the wall before wrapping her arms around the waist of the boy who was suspended from the upper bunk by one of Jackson's school uniform ties. Supporting him, she felt around for the Windsor that Jackson always used only to find that one of the boys had tied some terrible monstrosity of a seemingly unending knot. As she fumbled around, Jackson's doctor and a team of nurses appeared at the door, the nurses pouring in to help Nurse Douglas. Without a second thought, the thirteen-year-old ignored the others and walked over to the doctor, standing beside him as he watched as the nurses fuss over the unconscious boy hanging from the bed. One cut Jackson's tie and he sighed angrily.

'That was a good tie.'

The doctor put his hand on Jackson's shoulder and watched Nurse Douglas give the boy CPR until he coughed raggedly. Glaring up at the two of them, she spoke.

'Get Jackson out of here,' she said, fury behind every word. '_Now_.'

The man closed his hand around Jackson's shoulder and led him out of the room towards his office. The boy was silent the entire time, but if he was angry, he didn't show it in his face. They came to a heavy oak door and the doctor pushed Jackson in before him, slamming the door and locking it behind both of them. Without a word, he went around and closed the heavy curtains; the room was bathed in darkness until he clicked on his desk lamp.

'You're upset, Dr Greene.'

The dark-haired man came around the desk and sat in a chair across from Jackson, who was now sitting with his legs Indian-style with his elbows on his knees. His speech was incredibly calculated. 'It's one thing if you try to escape in the middle of the night, but it's another thing if you try to kill your roommate by hanging him from the bed.'

'How do you know he didn't do it to himself?' he asked with a little smile as Dr Greene glared at him. 'I was going to just have him smothered with a pillow, but I thought that was a bit trite. I didn't want to repeat myself. Creativity and all that.'

Dr Greene pinched his lips together until they were white. 'Do you see anything wrong with what you're doing?'

Jackson honestly tried to look as though he was really considering the question. 'Should I?'

Inwardly, Dr Greene smiled at the boy's outright audacity, but he kept his professional façade. 'Killing isn't a craft for smart boys like you, Jackson.'

Amusement flickered across Jackson's face. 'Odd way to phrase that, Doctor.'

Dr Greene leaned slipped forward on his chair and rested his elbows knees. He stared at the boy, who slowly leaned in so that their faces were only about half a foot apart. 'You need to stop this behaviour or we won't be able to release you on time.'

'Release me in time for what?' Jackson asked, narrowing his eyes.

There was a fleeting moment of consideration before Dr Greene stood and walked around his desk, settling down in the plush leather rolling chair and pulling open one of the drawers. He drew out a slightly battered envelope and threw it under the lamp so that Jackson could see it. Uncrossing his legs, Jackson leaned forward and laid a hand on the manila envelope, tipping it slightly towards him so he could read the spindly writing on the face.

'Leelanau School?' he asked before looking back at Dr Greene.

'A boarding school in Glen Arbor,' Dr Greene replied, steepling his fingers. 'We send a lot of our prospectives there.'

Jackson took the envelope and slipped it into his lap, looking at the seal of the school—a large _L_ encapsulated in a double circle with oak and pine leaves tapping the crux of the letter. 'I'm afraid I don't understand.'

'You aren't meant to,' the doctor said, raising his eyebrows. 'All that you need to know is that you need to stop this childish behaviour soon.'

An extemporaneous laugh escaped Jackson's lips as he gave Dr Greene an incredulous look. 'Is that a threat?'

Greene didn't skip a beat. 'Would you like it to be?'

Jackson's eyebrow twitched as he ripped open the envelope. 'What makes me a prospective to go to this school?'

'Everything is decided according to a psychological test administered by myself and some of the nurses,' he said. 'A Swiss test.'

'Swiss test,' Jackson repeated, pulling out the school information and scanning it over. 'I'm not going to get any more information, am I?'

'I don't trust you that much,' he said in monotone.

His bright eyes flittered up to Dr Greene for just a moment before he went back to reading. The high school was indeed different, focusing more on individual strengths rather than just lecturing to a room of blank-faced students. What was most important, however, was that the entire day was scheduled to the minute. He could see what Dr Greene was attempting here—the doctor knew that any unused time was time that Jackson could use to, say, hang his roommate from a bed with his private school tie.

'We're going to go ahead and place you in a single room,' Dr Greene said, interrupting Jackson's reading. 'You've already tried to kill two roommates, so—'

'I had my reasons,' Jackson snapped back quickly.

Dr Greene twisted a pen in his hand. 'That's not the point.'

'_Pacta sunt servanda_,' he said softly, not looking up from the school catalogue.

The man froze, looking at Jackson with wide eyes. 'What did you say?'

'_Pacta sunt servanda_,' Jackson repeated, looking up at the doctor. 'Latin. Agreements—'

'—must be honoured,' the doctor finished. 'I'm very familiar with the phrase.'

Jackson rolled his eyes before looking back down and speaking under his breath. 'Then why ask me the meaning? You know, I don't think I've noticed anyone else being sent to this school...'

'Whose agreements were you honouring?' Dr Greene said, leaning hard on his desk.

'You know how it is,' Jackson said, closing the catalogue and then slipping it neatly back into the envelope. 'You're a professional too—we take everything in confidence.'

Almost as if it had been prearranged, there was a loud knocking at the door. Greene gave Jackson a surprised look as he just smiled contentedly. Watching the back of the unmoving Jackson, Greene crossed the room slowly. The knocking continued until Greene unlocked the door to reveal a frantic nurse.

'Doctor, we need you immediately,' the nurse said, shifting from foot to foot nervously. 'We were unable to stabilise the patient. He—'

She looked beyond the doctor to the back of Jackson's head.

'Oh, sir, I didn't realise that you had a patient,' she said, blushing.

Jackson turned around to look at the doctor and nurse with smugness, balancing on his knees as he grasped the back of the chair. 'You heard her, doctor. Best be getting on now.'

Greene clenched his jaw. 'Nurse, please take Mr Rippner to solitary confinement. I'd like him in a Posey until I have a chance to talk to him.'

The woman looked at the calm boy and then back at the doctor questioningly, but she had no choice but to take the psychiatrist's demands. 'Yes sir.'

The nurse ran down the hall to give the message to another nurse before returning to watch Jackson. Dr Greene left the room and within a couple of minutes, two orderlies showed up with a straitjacket. Jackson didn't fight them until he was completely bound, at which time he started laughing and had to be carried to his confinement.

---

One rule of a solitary room in a mental hospital is that it must not have any items which may be used as weapons, and this happened to include not only chairs, as one would expect, but also all sorts of clocks. By the grumbling of Jackson's stomach, he could only assume that it was around lunchtime when there were finally footsteps outside of his room, but seeing as he'd missed breakfast also, it could still be brunch time. He mused over this as he listened to the muffled voices outside of his door—yes, they'd definitely stopped right in front of his—trying to figure out exactly had come to check up on him. At first, he thought it was just a nurse, but soon Dr Greene's familiar face appeared in the slot, his skin red and his eyes looking absolutely enraged. The slot cracked shut once he saw that Jackson was seated on the other side, and within moments he stepped in the room, throwing the door against the padded wall, crossing quickly to pull Jackson up by the front of his straitjacket.

'This isn't a time for your _fucking_ games,' the man hissed, shoving Jackson up against one of the walls. 'How are you going to explain that you killed your roommate?'

'I didn't kill him,' said Jackson calmly, his lips moving very deliberately with each word.

'What the hell do you mean?' the doctor said, pressing him so hard, his arms were shaking from the exertion.

'I arranged the entire operation, but I didn't kill him,' Jackson said self-indulgently.

Dr Greene dropped the slight thirteen-year-old and moved back a couple of steps. Jackson tipped his head to the side, but the questioning look didn't spread beyond that. He seemed vaguely proud of himself for a successful job—nothing else seemed to register. He didn't even appear to be afraid of the consequences of his actions, his face as cool as his eyes.

'What's wrong, Dr Greene?' he asked, leaning forward a little with a demure smile. 'Won't this improve the results of your Swiss test?'

Greene frowned.

'I've seen my files,' Jackson murmured, and there was a pop as he dislocated his shoulder and started making his way out of his straitjacket. 'You know, the results of my little test. "Unable to make meaningful relationships with peers, a non-ability to trust others, yet incredibly bright and manipulating." What exactly is _La société mondiale des investigateurs privés_?'

Jackson managed to get the buckles of his straitjacket to the front of his body and started to unbuckle it with his teeth. Dr Greene watched him nervously, obviously trying to decide whether he should leave and alert the nurses or stay with Jackson, but as he moved to the door, Jackson stopped immediately and let out a low growl. Greene's hand stopped right before he rapped on the door, and he turned around to look at Jackson, who was looking his most malicious.

'You didn't answer my question, Doctor,' he snarled, snapping his shoulder back into place before throwing the straitjacket to the side.

'That's not for now, Jackson. Now what we need to worry about is finding a way to get you out of this mess,' he said almost nervously, leaning back against the door, attempting to look calm as Jackson gave him a terrifying look. 'You have to tell me who made you do this. In the future, you can subscribe to professional secrecy, but at this point, you have no support structure to get you out of your punishment.'

'What does it matter if I get caught up in punishment?' he asked, leaning back against the wall egotistically as he rubbed his shoulder. 'Punishment has never actually punished me before.'

'You're being cocky. Think logically.'

Under Dr Greene's hazel glare, Jackson reviewed outcomes. Stay silent, and he could be institutionalised for many more years without a hope for parole or release, but he would also gain the trust of his employer. However, what was the use of the trust of one woman if he had no chance to build his résumé outside of a state-run children's psychiatric facility in southern New York? His eyes clouded, and Dr Greene saw that he could announce the victory.

'Jackson,' he said softly, walking over and bending down to his eye level. 'Who hired you for this murder?'

---

'It was Martha Webster, Patrick's mother.'

The courtroom was mostly empty, the proceedings being slightly hush-hush because of the persons involved. In fact, there was a hesitancy to do any sort of court case until it was announced that Jackson would be considered a witness to the plaintiff, Patrick's father William. Shortly after Patrick's death, Jackson had given a statement, which was signed by Dr Philip Greene to establish legality, that said he was paid by Martha Webster to arrange for her son's death through any means possible.

'And how did you manage to arrange this murder?' asked William Webster's barrister, pacing in front of the stand.

'Manipulation,' Jackson answered, but after a moment of silence, he realised that he was expected to give a fuller answer. 'I convinced one of the boys down the hall to give me a dose of the lorazepam he keeps hidden under his bed and in return, I promised not to tell the nurses about the stash.'

'And you used this… lorh-ahzy-PAHM to...?'

'I dropped the _lor-AYE-zeh-pam_ into the medicine cup the nurses brought around every morning for Patrick. It looked a lot like one of the pills he always took, so I was able to switch them out relatively easily,' he explained, smiling a bit at the confused look on the lawyer's face. 'Lorazepam is a sedative. Patrick thought he was sick, so he went back to bed.'

'I see,' said the barrister, putting a hand to his chin. 'Now, clear this up for me, Mr Rippner, how is it that you didn't kill Patrick Webster?'

'It's a sedative, not a poison,' Jackson said sharply in a holy-than-thou-art tone. 'I had lorazepam boy hang Patrick from the bed.'

'But Patrick Webster didn't die from asphyxiation.'

'No, he didn't.'

'Will you be so kind as to tell us how he died?'

'Certainly,' Jackson replied with a creepy little smile. 'When the nurses all rushed in, one of them was the one I convinced to inject him with the antibiotic that ended up killing him. As she held him up, she stabbed a syringe into him that was full of tilmicosin,' he paused again before explaining himself. 'Although fabulous in administration to bovines, the antibiotic is quite lethal to humans.'

The barrister seemed slightly flustered by Jackson's immense pharmaceutical knowledge and looked over at Dr Greene darkly as though it were his fault. 'So Sharena Douglas was the murderer?'

Jackson rolled his eyes. 'No, don't be stupid. Nurse Douglas can't be swayed to do anyone's bidding.'

The judge laughed lightly.

'The nurse was Lauren Gates.'

'Lauren Gates,' the barrister repeated, seemingly for the court typist's sake. 'How were you able to manage to convince her to do that for you?'

The same little smile came over his face. 'I promised that I wouldn't tell Dr Greene about our illicit affair.'


	4. 2 August 1992

A/N: Editing this is driving me crazy. I'm only a little over half done. How long can a story beeee! And I still have two stories left to edit...

---

Two years later, Jackson Rippner sat, relatively bored, in the back of a Towncar driving through rural Michigan. Dressed in a sharp suit with not a hair out of place and wearing the glasses he'd been prescribed only a week earlier, he seemed to perfectly fit the stereotype of a gifted fifteen-year-old who would be going to a more than fifty-thousand-dollar-a-year boarding school. In the front seat, Sharena Douglas drove, giving him a look in the rear-view mirror every now and then. The sound of the tires on the pavement changed as they started going over a bridge, and Jackson looked away from the lake on either side to meet her eyes in the mirror.

'So, if you're posing as my nursemaid, can I call you Mammy?'

Sharena gave him an absolutely dangerous look before reaching back and hitting him upside the head. He put his hands up defensively and then adjusted his glasses, which had been thrown askew. Despite years of attempts, he'd still been unable to faze the woman, and that did nothing but piss him off every moment he spent with her. With a decidedly childish look on his nearly adult face, Jackson crossed his gangly legs and looked back out at the lake that was now on his side only. Silence filled the vehicle as they drove along Route 22, the edge of Lake Michigan visible in the distance. Traffic increased as Sharena turned onto a small road that led them deep into the woods, and within a moment, they were pulling up to a commons building with tonnes of students and luggage piled about. Jackson stared at all of them, having already convinced himself that all of this was a horrendously bad idea.

As they parked, a couple of upperclassmen ran up to the car and under Sharena's watch grabbed up Jackson's tweed Hartmann luggage. Jackson just watched them with slight disinterest from his place on the leather seat before the nurse gave him a look and he stepped out of the car, straightening his suit after slamming the car door. Sharena re-pinned her nurse's cap in her hair before pressing her hand to his back and shoving him forward after the upperclassmen.

'So, what's your name?' asked the boy who was carrying Jackson's hard-side bag.

Jackson pushed his glasses up on his nose. 'Jackson Rippner.'

'Is it ever Jack for short?'

'No,' he said tensely. 'Never.'

'That's always the issue with an easily shortened name, isn't it?' the teenager asked, shifting the bag in his hand. 'I'm Andrew, but people always feel the urge to call me Andy, which wouldn't be a huge issue except for the fact that my surname is Crandy.'

Jackson smiled inwardly. At least his moniker had some interesting connotations.

'Where are you from?'

'Albany,' Jackson replied as they walked through the front doors of the commons building. 'But I've been living outside of New York City for the last four years.'

'NYC, nice,' Andrew replied as they walked up to the registration table. 'Jackson Rippner.'

The woman manning the table looked up at Sharena before fingering through a list in front of her. 'Andrew, go ahead and take Mr Rippner's bags up to his room. He's in Kindall Hall, room eight.'

'A single?' Andrew said, turning to look at Jackson, gaping. 'Who did you have to kill to get a single as a freshman?'

A jab in the back from Sharena stopped Jackson from giving one of his normal snarky answers. He cleared his throat. 'I'm here through a special programme, so that's probably why.'

Andrew glanced over at the registration woman and shrugged before nodding his head over to a door that led back outside. The group of guys carrying Jackson's luggage left before the woman behind the table spoke again.

'It says here that you have a meeting with the Dean of Studies,' she said with a smile, obviously completely oblivious. 'I'll send someone to get him for you.'

'That's not necessary,' said Sharena, putting a hand on Jackson's shoulder. 'Jackson's benefactor graduated from here and already told me where to take him. The Dean's probably expecting us right now.'

'All right,' she said, quickly turning her attention to the waiting freshman behind Jackson.

Jackson followed Sharena as she left the lobby and turned down a mostly deserted hallway. Their footsteps echoed against the walls and not a word was spoken between them as they passed closed office doors. In his mind, Jackson was taking in information that perhaps the typical teenager wouldn't take into consideration in a new place; he was more concerned with identifying which professor was in each room than anything physical about the location. He'd studied up on these people, finding out where each was schooled, their social and political beliefs, their families – everything was provided by Dr Greene from the mysterious society that Jackson was being trained to participate in. He'd had plenty of time over the summer to learn how to best manipulate each professor and had been informed that not a single one, even the one they were meeting, had any clue about the society.

As Sharena knocked on the door, Jackson straightened. The door opened and a grey-haired man beckoned them in. 'You must be Jackson Rippner. It's a pleasure to meet such a bright young man.'

Jackson reached out with a refined smile and shook his hand. 'I assure you, sir, the pleasure is shared in meeting such a renowned academic such as yourself, Dr Simons.'

The man puffed up his chest a little in pride before gesturing them to the two chairs in front of his desk. 'Would you please take a seat?'

The two of them sat down as the man walked back around to sit at his desk. Sharena was smiling, obviously gracious that Jackson hadn't chosen to be an ass.

'So Mr Rippner,' Dr Simons said, leaning against the desk's writing surface. 'You're the recipient of the World Society's scholarship this year. That's a very high honour.'

'Yes, my benefactor was quite pleased.'

'Now, looking at your files here, it seems like you've had a very different life from most of the other recipients,' said Dr Simons, picking up a thick manila file and thumbing through it. 'Usually our World Society Scholars are international students, but it seems that you haven't travelled outside of the United States in the last five years, but have rather been institutionalised since the deaths of your parents in 1987.'

'It was very difficult for Jackson to adjust to life without Alice and Michael,' Sharena said, reaching over to pat Jackson's hand. It was absolutely cold. 'At Rockland, he was able to have constant support so that he could continue his academic endeavours without the roadblock of mental trauma.'

'Of course, of course,' said the doctor, giving a pitying smile to Jackson. 'It says in the paperwork that he was chosen for his abilities in foreign language, political relations, and business management. Those are pretty lofty subjects for a boy your age.'

'My father was a businessman,' said Jackson with a slight grimace hiding in his smile. 'And my mother was a lawyer. The first ten years of my life were steeped in politics, law and business.'

'How lucky of you!' the doctor replied, and Jackson nearly cringed. 'Now, your school reports say that you attended a francophone school in Albany for all of your elementary education and have spent the last few summers taking courses at Columbia University. What languages do you have a good handle on?'

'French, German and Spanish,' he replied succinctly. 'I will begin Slavic languages this coming summer.'

'Fantastic!' the doctor said, leaning back in his seat. 'We're absolutely enchanted to have the chance to teach a student like you here at Leelanau.'

He stood and walked to a filing cabinet, pulling out a large envelope and handing it to Jackson. His name was on a label affixed to the top right corner right next to the now-familiar crest of _La société mondiale des investigateurs privés_, a simple Latin phrase written in a ribbon below it: _Fiat justitia, et pereat mundus_ – let justice be done, though the world perish. It always seemed vaguely ironic to him.

'This is your class schedule, student and faculty directory, and other pertinent information from the World Society,' said Dr Simons, tapping the top of the envelope. 'If you have any questions, any at all, please don't hesitate to call me. Have a great time here at Leelanau.'


	5. 8 October 1993

A/N: I wanted to get so much done yesterday, but I've come down with the flu! I got the flu the first time I was writing these stories up last year! The story is obviously out to get me!

---

'Oh my God, and he always wears suits! There's nothing better than a well-dressed man!'

'No, no, it's the eyes! Has he ever looked at you? They're so beautiful!'

A couple of tables over, Jackson dropped his book to glare at the table full of giggling girls.

'He's looking! Hurry, look away!' one of them whispered loudly, and they all went back to pushing around their salads.

By early sophomore year, Jackson had already grown tired of the multitudes of girls who seemed to be interested in him. At first, it was fun to toy with their little female emotions, but it got old pretty quickly. Every day at every meal, he'd bury himself in a book, growling at the giggles that were aimed directly at him. The only girls he'd had to deal with for the previous five years were nearly as crazy as he was, and that at least gave them an excuse for being completely frivolous flirters, but these girls had absolutely no excuse. They were everywhere though, like the plague, their giggling like the boils on the lymph nodes alerting the bearer to the fact that doom was imminent. He'd become very adept at hiding, whether it was in a class building or the woods, and more than once he'd found his way into the air ducts weaving their way through the ceilings.

'Jesus Christ, man,' said his chemistry partner, taking a seat beside him at the dinner table as he watched the girls who were looking Jackson. 'Level with me… are you gay?'

Jackson looked over the top of his copy of _Crime and Cover-Up_, rolling his eyes. 'Is it completely unbelievable that I just have absolutely no interest in those self-involved, lusty, incredibly dense co-eds?'

Looking between the table girls and Jackson, the fellow sophomore raised his eyebrows. 'Yes?'

Snapping the book shut, Jackson scooped up his tray and took it over to the kitchen without another word. The girls, who had obviously finished their meals long ago, got up and came over, unloading their trays as he did. He absolutely refused to make eye contact with a single one until a girl stepped on his foot, which made him swing around to glare at her. He was surprised, however, when it was someone he didn't recognise.

'Ah, sorry,' said the obviously Australian redhead, setting down her tray heavily. 'You have sort of a gaggle of girls following you, so… well, I'll be honest, I was hoping I'd get one of them.'

The four girls who were slowly unloading their trays smirked a bit as he looked at them, but then gaped when he turned and spoke to this new girl. 'I prefer to call them a murder of females.'

'No, that's what you want to do to them,' she said with a smile that reminded Jackson much of his own. She held out a hand. 'Melissa Bayley.'

'Jackson—'

'Rippner,' she interrupted. 'Dr Simons told me about you. I'm the new recipient of the World Society scholarship.'

Jackson tipped his head and gave her a little smile, which caused all the girls to glare at Melissa. 'Pleasure to meet you.'

---

Late that night, Jackson was climbing deftly up one of the outer walls of the girls' dormitory. Stopping at a window that glowed light blue, he looked in to make sure there was no movement before jamming his knife under the jamb. The window creaked loudly, but Jackson didn't have to open it that much to slip in. There was a humming coming from the Macintosh PowerBook Duo that was sitting on the desk, so he leaned closer to the screen before realising that Melissa's picture was open in a graphics-editing programme, snuggled to the left corner of a very legal-looking Michigan ID.

There was a soft sound behind him, and before he could respond, his arms were braced behind him.

'Need something, Jackson?' asked a soft Australian-accented voice beside his ear.

'I didn't realise you were in,' he said, fighting a little against her grasp, but not really putting much strength into it. 'Just checking up on the competition.'

She laughed a little and let him go. When he turned around, she was standing in a nightgown, her hands on her hips. 'It's after lights out.'

'Rules have never really stopped me.'

They stared at each other for a few long minutes before Melissa's screensaver came on and they were thrown into darkness.

'Why are you here?'

He could hear her move to her bed and throw herself down on it, the mattress springs creaking.

'Because I was sent here.'

'You know what I mean,' he hissed, pulling out her desk chair and sitting backwards in it, his arms crossed over the wooden back. 'There's only supposed to be one of us here at a time.'

'All I know is that my parents got a call from Switzerland and I was on a flight from Melbourne to Detroit the next morning.'

'Your parents know?'

She made a little scoffing noise. 'Of course my parents know. People in the organisation can have kids too; it's not just the civilians that procreate. Mum's a manager and Dad's her main sniper.'

He rolled the chair a little closer to her. 'So then you know all about how the organisation works.'

'Don't get excited,' she said, rolling her eyes in the darkness. 'I may be an organisation brat, but that doesn't mean I know some huge secret that you haven't been told yet. I'm not even being trained as a manager like you; I'm just doing forgery. I _was_ studying at an Australian arts high school, but you know, things change.'

He could hear her pulling her sheets up and began to feel vaguely uncomfortable about being in a girl's room, which all at once seemed ludicrous to him. 'Where were you hiding?'

'Closet.'

'Ah.'

'I always won hide and seek at school,' she said, humour apparent in her voice. 'When you have people trying to kidnap you all the time, you get really good at hiding.'

---

Jackson picked up the phone after the first ring. 'Rippner.'

'You seem to be getting pretty cosy with Melissa Bayley.'

'Hello, Sharena,' Closing his management science book, Jackson rested his elbows on the desk. 'I should have known you had something to do with this.'

'Don't you wish,' said the woman with a hefty laugh. 'Always blaming everything on Sharena, honey.'

He smiled into the receiver. 'Did Dr Greene send her?'

'Oh no, she was sent from the top,' replied Sharena in a gossipy tone. 'Her Momma and Daddy are the top organisation members in Australia.'

'Is that why she came here? Influence?'

There was a long sigh. 'She was sent because you're not attaching to your peers, and that looks questionable.'

'I haven't tried to kill anyone,' he said quite matter-of-factly.

'Good job,' the nurse replied dryly. 'Should I send congratulatory cookies?'

'Will they be peanut butter?'

'Honey-child, I tell you this every time I call you: try to make friends, have a girlfriend even if it's just lip service to the institution. If you don't mingle, lips are gonna start waggin'. You're a pretty boy, and if a pretty boy doesn't make himself available, somethin's goin' on,' she said, begging.

'The girls here are daft.'

'Girls everywhere are daft, especially when they see a fine specimen like yourself,' she replied sharply. 'If you think that you were chosen just for your management and language skills, you're lying to yourself. For your line of work, you have to have a pretty face to get information.'

Jackson grumbled and dropped his head to the desktop. 'Sharena…'

'You need to learn to act. It may not be sincere, but it'll get you plenty of work,' she said. 'The best people in this institution are the ones who can just take on personas and run with them.'

'I'm not going to lie to some girl.'

'Girls are going to lie to you!' she said, laughing. 'Don't get too worried—girls your age want something to boast about to their friends; they're too young to know what love is.'

There was silence before he sighed, and although she couldn't see him, she knew he was rolling his eyes.

'Okay, I'll ask one of the murder out.'


	6. 22 May 1995

A/N: If anyone has any questions about the story, has anything they want to see on the website, et cetera, make sure to comment or PM me so I can answer anything!

---

A year and a half and eight girlfriends later, Jackson stood on the shore of Lake Michigan skipping stones with Melissa sitting behind him. Her arms were wrapped around her bent legs as she watched his fluid movements from beside his suit jacket. From the moment she met him, she didn't exactly know how to explain him to anyone. He was very picky about the company he kept and a good number of people would simply refer to him as an ass unless they saw him absorbed in conversation with her or other members of the organisation. She constantly had girls coming up to her asking how she'd broken through his shell; finally they'd both just decided to play the gay card and she miraculously became the fag hag of a completely straight male that she occasionally made out with emotionlessly in the equestrian stables when the other students were already out riding. It didn't last for long, however: they quickly came to realise that gay men attract more women than straight ones do, so overnight, he went back to being straight complete with some very public PDA with a girl he sat next to in physics.

'Come on, Jacks. It's getting cold. Let's head back to campus.'

He didn't reply, but just kept throwing rocks. Pulling her sweater tightly around her, she looked out at the lake and sighed at the setting sun. Jackson's shoulder-length hair swung around as he skimmed another rock out on the surface. Melissa angrily ran her fingers through her own straight auburn locks.

'I'll take your fucking car and go back myself if you don't stop throwing the damn rocks, put your suit jacket back on, and head back to campus with me,' she hissed.

Dropping the rock in his hand, he sighed and dug his car keys out of his pants pocket, throwing them to her. 'Have a big time.'

She gaped at him before throwing the keys back at his head roughly and standing, stalking over to him to scream right in his ear. 'You're being a _child_!'

'And you're a whorish bitch!'

Her hand connected with his face and he staggered a little before bending and scooping up the Austin-Healy keys from the water. With a glare at her, he stalked away from the water's edge and up to the road where his red Sprite MK II sat. She ran after him, grabbing up his suit jacket as she went by, and when she got within firing distance, she threw it at his head.

'This job is fugacious!' Melissa seethed, shoving him up against the car with his suit jacket still on his head. 'You're not always going to have the same contacts: people are going to quit, people are going to die—you just have to accept it as inevitable. It's part of being a _mature_ employee!'

Jackson slacked in her arms and laid his head back on the top of the tiny car. She couldn't see the expression on his face, but she had a feeling it had set back into that normal, emotionless look that everyone associated with Jackson.

'She's my best friend,' Jackson said slowly, his voice muffled by the jacket. 'Why would she just leave like that without a word?'

'At least you know she's not dead,' Melissa said, trying to sound positive.

Casually reaching out, she rolled the suit jacked back from his face and stood, her hands curled around the folded fabric. He stayed bent back, looking beyond the trees to the darkening sky with an unreadable expression. Slipping her arms around his waist, she leaned forward and rested her head on his chest, the physical contact comforting but meaningless. He remained motionless.

'Peach.'

'Hm?' she said, turning her head so that her chin was on his chest and she could look at him. 'What is it?'

'Let's get wasted.'

She laughed loudly, but knew he was completely serious. Taking the keys from his hand, she pushed him aside and got into the driver's seat as he came around and got in the other side. In their pockets, they both had fabulous fake identifications provided by Melissa herself, and they knew if they could get just a certain distance from Glen Arbor, few people could recognise them as Leelanau students. After putting the car into gear and looking at the still-moping passenger, Melissa sped off to the south.

---

When a knock came on the door the next morning, it sounded like a jackhammer was being used directly over Jackson's temple. He groaned loudly before pressing his hands hard to his ears and pulling his pillow over his head. Melissa stirred next to him, and a moment later, he heard the thump as she fell out of the bed and jumped to her feet. He looked out from under the pillow to see her standing there, her hair every which way and dressed in some flannel monstrosity that she wore whenever the weather got cold. With a start, he realised that he was in her room rather than his, so as she made her way to the door, he deftly rolled off the other side of the bed and slipped under it just as the door opened.

'Good morning, Dr Jones.'

'Good morning, Miss Bayley. Do you happen to know where Jackson Rippner is?'

'In his room?' she responded innocently.

The woman furrowed her brow. 'No, he's not in his room, and he didn't show up for his final examination in English today.'

Under the bed, Jackson mentally bitch-slapped himself before being a man and standing up. 'Hello, Professor.'

'What are you doing in the women's dorms, Mr Rippner?' asked the professor, obviously scandalised.

Melissa looked at Jackson, curious as to how he was going to handle the situation. She almost laughed when false tears gathered at the edges of his crystalline eyes and he let out a very theatrical sniffle, but instead of blowing his cover, she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth as though upset that he was upset.

'Well…' he started before sniffling again. 'You know that Melissa is like a sister to me, and…'

Tears started falling down Jackson's face and the professor put a hand to her chest, giving him a sympathetic look.

'And, well… my nanny, who has been taking care of me since my parents died, she…'

Jackson broke into huge, theatrical sobs and Melissa snorted, covering it up as a choked sob. Walking over to Jackson, she pulled him to her and laughed into his shoulder, which got her a sharp pinch on the back when he put his arms around her.

'Oh, Mr Rippner, I had no idea…' the woman at the door said softly. 'Why don't you make up the exam when you feel better, all right? There's no use in delaying your trip to the Czech Republic this fall just because something this unfortunate ended up happening at finals time. You feel better, all right?'

Looking up from Melissa's shoulder with bloodshot eyes and pouting lips, Jackson nodded slowly at her, and the professor reached out and closed the door. They listened to her steps as they faded down the hallway, and once the fire door on the other side clicked shut, Jackson broke away from Melissa and fell back on the bed, moaning about his head.

'Fabulous performance,' said the Australian, clapping her hands as she went over to sit in her computer chair. 'Truly Oscar material.'

'No clapping,' he groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. 'Shh… no clapping.'

Turning back to her desk, Melissa reached a pale hand up to her CD player. Jackson moaned and grabbed a pillow to put over his head when the player began spinning the CD, and within a moment Weezer music was blaring out of the speakers along with Melissa's cackling laughter.


	7. 1 November 1995

A/N: I'm not looking forward to tomorrow. Tomorrow's gonna suck.

Again, if you have any questions about the trilogy that you'd like answered, feel free to ask 'em.

---

It was a very rainy, very disgusting day in Prague. The taxicab drove through the wet streets towards Riverside International School with its seventeen-year-old, sharply dressed passenger sitting professionally in the back, a leather Hartmann briefcase across his lap with his hands placed firmly upon it. Every time the driver checked the rear-view mirror, the boy's blue eyes would flash up dangerously, so he quickly decided it to be a better idea to just keep his eyes on the road. When he got the call from dispatch to pick the boy up from his apartment on the edge of the city, he'd been warned that this was no normal student, and the location of his apartment attested to that: it was nestled neatly above the country's headquarters of the Swiss organisation World Society.

'_Prosim zastavte tady_.'

The driver looked confused and glanced around the streets. No one was in the area and the rain was still pouring. '_Nerozumim_…'

'What is there to understand? Stop right here,' Jackson said harshly, throwing a fistful of _koruna_ into the front seat as the man slammed on the brakes.

As Jackson stepped out of the vehicle, he popped open an umbrella and walked to the sidewalk along _U statni drahy_, watching carefully from behind his glasses as the taxi pulled away before walking into a small alley between two buildings. Sitting under a metal awning was a blind older man—Jackson wasted no time and walked directly to him. He bent down slowly, his wool coat brushing against his stubbly chin as he spoke smoothly.

'_Ahoj, kmet_,' he said with a smile, and the man gave him a toothless grin.

'Jackson,' the man said, reaching up to feel the younger man's face. 'You have the documents?'

'I used the information you gave me,' he replied, setting his briefcase on the table at which the old man sat. He pulled off his hat and placed it next to the case. 'And was able to plan the entire operation in two weeks.'

The old man laughed. 'You're a once in a lifetime catch, my boy.'

Both of them looked up at the door behind the old man as a young woman stepped out carrying a tray with three teacups. Her dark hair was tied back in a loose ponytail and because she was wearing no makeup, her freckles were very noticeable. She flickered a look at Jackson before leaning down and kissing the old man on top of his head.

'Boy, you've met my stepdaughter, yes?'

'Of course,' Jackson said, reaching out to take her hand in his own. He pressed a light kiss atop her knuckles. 'Professor Melinyshyn, it's always a pleasure.'

She gave him a dark little smile but didn't reply verbally. Her attention was turned to Jackson's briefcase, which still laid unopened on the table's surface next to the steaming cups. Without a question, she reached over and snapped open the latches, revealing a thick manila file. She took it into her hands and opened it slowly, taking in the information on the page silently as Jackson handed one of the teacups to her stepfather.

'Very good,' she muttered, her Czech immensely less accented than her English. 'You've spoken to Adani about this?'

Jackson nodded. 'He's assuring our scapegoat is at the Square following the rally. He'll pick you up from the Tel Aviv airport the night before.'

Flipping through a few pages, she smiled. 'How quaint! A semi-automatic pistol!'

Jackson smiled at her from behind his teacup. 'I thought you'd like that.'

'And Adani has everything set up on his end?'

'I confirmed everything this morning before I left my apartment,' Jackson said, reaching over to close the top of his briefcase. 'The weapon, the scapegoat, the hospital arrangements.'

'My plane tickets?' she asked, her lips puckering as she spoke.

'Melissa will be by later with them,' he replied before downing the last of his tea. 'She has your tickets and your identity all set up.'

'Look how these children handle everything, Lyna,' the old man said, holding his teacup shakily. 'Our Jackson here is only seventeen, and yet he's already a man, doing men's work!'

Lyna set down the file and picked up her teacup with a playful look on her face. 'Indeed he is a man, _Tata_.'

Setting down his teacup carefully, Jackson gave a smouldering look to Lyna, one that she returned. 'I best be on my way before Melissa gets here. It was good to see you again, Mr Ruzicka, Professor Melinyshyn.'

He closed the snaps on his briefcase before taking it up in his hand and walking back into the rain. It pitter-pattered on his umbrella as he made his way out to a different road, turning to the right as soon as he left the alley. Just as he turned, he came face to face with Melissa, who shoved him into a storefront window. Her face was red and it looked like she'd been crying. She didn't have an umbrella with her, so her hair was plastered to her head and her blouse was stuck to her skin. As an awkward peace offering, Jackson held the umbrella over her head, but she just ripped it from his hand and threw it onto the sidewalk.

'What did I tell you when we got to Prague?' she asked harshly, pressing her body close to his, breathing little white puffs of air in his face. 'What did I _say_?'

Jackson smiled, looking intently in her brown eyes. 'Peach, what is this—'

Her face didn't change, but an instant later, her fist connected harshly with his stomach and he curled a little, coughing. 'What did I tell you about her?'

Jackson looked up at her angrily, trying to catch his breath. '_That's_ what this is about?'

She gritted her teeth. 'She will rip your heart out and eat it with her afternoon tea.'

He rolled his eyes. 'Jealous much?'

She stared at him for a moment before laughing loudly. 'Jealous? _Jealous?_ God, you're so fucking cocky!'

They were quiet as a couple of people passed by, and then Melissa snapped her head as though she'd heard something. She slid back from him smoothly just before the dark-haired Ukrainian woman came out from the alley, a hat held primly between pale hands.

'Jackson, _ty_…' she started, and then gave a devious look to Melissa before switching over to English. 'Ah, Melissa. What a surprise to see you here today.'

'Professor,' she forced before digging in her twill tote bag. 'I brought my assignment for you to look over. I hope it's to your liking.'

'I am sure it will be,' Lyna said, taking the manila envelope that Melissa held out for her. 'Jackson, I will see you tonight for our tutoring session?'

'Jacks and I already have plans tonight, don't we?' Melissa responded quickly, grabbing Jackson's hand and giving him a dangerous look.

He looked between the two women before Melissa's nails dug into his skin. 'We'll have to reschedule, Professor Melinyshyn. I completely forgot that Melissa and I are going to Berlin for the break, and I know you'll be out of town all of next week. Perhaps next Friday?'

Lyna gave them a smile that expressed her complete and utter hate of the tall redhead that stood next to Jackson. 'Next Friday then.'

Melissa held him in place as Lyna handed him the hat that he'd left on the table. The Ukrainian gave him a kiss on each cheek before backing up and disappearing into the alley once more. Once she'd gone, Melissa grabbed up his umbrella, shoved it into his chest, and then grabbed his hand again, dragging him after her as she made her way to the Metro station.

---

Six hours later, Melissa was glaring at Jackson over a glass of dark ale at a small bar between the Hackescher Markt S-Bahn station and the Neue Synagogue. Off in the distance, the Berliner Fernsehturm was glowing dimly from the bottom of its silvery sphere of a top, at that was all that Jackson could focus on. Melissa reached across the table to put her hand over Jackson's, narrowing her eyes at him as she did so.

'You have to listen to me,' she said quietly, not wanting to attract the attention of the people around them. 'Keep the relationship with Vasylyna Melinyshyn purely professional.'

'Why does it even matter to you?' he hissed, abandoning the Fernsehturm and leaning towards her.

'Trust me, you don't want anything to do with her,' said Melissa, tipping her head and enunciating every word. 'She has a certain _reputation_.'

'Oh big damn deal, she has a reputation,' he replied, rolling his eyes. 'We all have reputations or we wouldn't be in this business.'

She raised her hands and mocked like she was strangling him. 'You're! So! Aggravating!'

He looked pleased with himself.

'Wipe that damn look off your face,' she said, sulking. 'I'm just gonna put it out there: Vasylyna has been in the business for almost ten years now and she's been a damn good employee. She hasn't missed a single mark. But—and this is very important—she's a filthy whore.'

Jackson stared at her wide eyes. 'And?'

'Whores aren't good, Jackson,' she said as though she were speaking to a kindergartener. 'She's just going to use you for sex, give you some horrible disease, and then break your heart.'

'Mel, Mel… Peach…' he murmured, reaching out to take both of her hands carefully into his. 'Have you ever considered that I'm just using her for sex?'

'Ew, Jackson!' she said, recoiling from his touch. 'Don't try to out-sex the master. She'll always be a step ahead of you.'

'There are people who are important to me like you, Sharena and Dr Greene,' he said, stretching across the table to take her hands again. 'Then there are people who I pretend are important like my ex-girlfriends and Vasylyna. Well, and basically everyone else.'

She looked him straight in the eyes, squeezing his hands. 'This is a bad idea.'

---

Despite Melissa's ministrations, Jackson awoke the next Saturday morning smelling of sex and the lingering scent of Lyna's perfume. He turned over in the bed, rubbing a hand over his forehead before walking stark naked to his kitchen to drink some cold coffee from when Lyna had left much earlier.

'I have to know—is it like having sex with your sister?'

Jackson spit out the coffee all over the counter and grabbed a dinner plate to offer himself a modicum of decency before turning to look at Melissa. 'Knock?'

'Or is it like having sex with yourself?' she continued, mostly ignoring him as she looked through his cabinets. ''Cause, you know, you seem like the kind of guy who would like to have sex with himself. God, she must not even buy you groceries. What do you eat around here?'

'I go out,' he answered shortly. 'What do you want?'

Turning quickly, she flung a manila envelope at his feet. 'Congratulations on the successful first management. You've been given a new assignment!'

She did little jazz hands before opening another cabinet and digging through his assortment of stale cereal. With her incapacitated, Jackson bent down and picked up the envelope. After putting on an apron, which made Melissa snort, he opened the container and dumped on the contents on the kitchen counter.

'Eric Hebborn,' Jackson said quietly, looking over the profile of the target.

'He's a—' Melissa started, spitting little oat flakes all over the floor.

'I know who he is,' he growled, flipping through the information. 'In Rome. This shouldn't be difficult at all.'

'It's gotta be different than your last,' she said, putting up the cereal box. 'You can't just go around shooting everybody.'

'I'm the manager here, thanks,' he said, closing the document. 'I've never even shot a gun at someone before. I'd prefer it if Lyna just bashed him over the head with a bat.'

'She'd like it too,' Melissa replied, jumping up to sit on the counter before speaking in a conspiratorial tone. 'I hear she drinks the blood of the freshly killed to retain her youthful looks.'

'For the love of…' he said, giving her an exasperated look. 'Will you just stop it?'

'No,' she replied honestly, leaning forward with her lips puckered.

His eyes went from her to the packet in his hands. 'When I know what I need, I'll call you. Until then…'

He was going to say something scathing, but when he looked back at her, he suddenly realised that at this point in time, she was his only friend on the entire continent. Swallowing his pride, he just gave her a rather bored look.

'I'll see you at school on Monday.'

She rolled her eyes before jumping down off of the counter and walking across the room to the front door of Jackson's apartment. He followed close on her heels (still wearing the apron, to his great embarrassment) and watched her from the door as she started walking down the stairs to the World Society headquarters below his apartment.

'Peach, wait,' he said, and she looked back expectantly. 'Wh—what was our Calculus homework?'

She gave him an icy look before speaking tersely. 'Page 259, problems 2 through 98, even.'

'Thanks,' he said lamely, but she just turned around and continued, slamming the door behind her very loudly when she got out of the stairwell.


	8. Early 1996

A/N: I've started editing Bejerot's Diagnosis, and let me tell you... that story makes me happy in the pants. I'm loving every minute of editing it! Wheeeee!

---

It was only a week after the New Year when Lyna returned to Jackson's hotel room in Rome. She'd travelled with a small group from the international school under the ruse that they were on a class trip – not that it really mattered much to Jackson. He was due back in Michigan a few days later to finish up his high school career and simply took a quick diversion in route to oversee the murder of Eric Hebborn and work on the initial plans another assassination tentatively scheduled for the first week in April. It was going to be his first distance assignment; final examinations were supposed to be a bitch, so he was going to be given a break between the April assassination and the assignment after it to study and then regroup after graduation. He was sprawled across the bed with papers spread all around him when the lock clicked unexpectedly. Eyes shooting up to the door, he grabbed at a knife that he'd had with him pretty much since he'd arrived in Rome a couple of days earlier.

Lyna stepped into the room, shedding her coat as she made her way to the bathroom—her clothes were drenched in blood. Expecting to hear the shower start, he went back to work but looked up when the bathroom door creaked open. Lyna stood there in just her bloody undergarments, which, he was oddly excited about, included a garter belt and stockings. There was blood caked on her face and throughout her hair, and as she leaned against the doorframe, he noticed that her entire mouth was red with blood as if she'd bit her tongue. Perhaps Melissa had been right about her tendency to drink the blood of her victims. At the thought, he laughed.

'What do you find funny, Jack?' she purred, a trail of blood creeping down the corner of her mouth as she spoke.

Before he could answer, she'd crossed the room and crawled on top of him, the blood getting all over his finely starched dress shirt and the papers he'd laid out over the comforter. She harshly kissed him, biting his lip to mix the blood in her mouth (was it hers or the victim's?) with his own. After the terrible coppery taste filled his mouth, he shoved her off before getting up and staring at her from beside the bed with the blood from his lip running freely down his chin. With a look of utmost confusion, he slowly raised the side of his wrist to his chin, rubbing at the blood and staring at it.

As he examined his wrist, she perched herself on all fours and looked at him with an expression not unlike a tigress'. There was a moment of stasis in which Jackson stared at Lyna and she stared back, waiting for his answer. Despite discomfort and Melissa's nagging in the back of his head, when she pounced on him once again, he could only succumb to lust like he had every time prior. She drank from his split lip with fervour as he ran his hands along her soft skin, both ignoring the fact that they were slamming into furniture and spreading blood all over the carpet.

---

'Jesus Christ, Jacks. What the hell happened to your lip?' asked Melissa with utmost concern when she met him at the Traverse City airport a few days later. Her eyes widened. 'Oh shit, did the target…?'

He shook his head, handing her one of his Hartmann suitcases as it came down the carousel. 'It is an injury of lust, peach.'

'She did something fucking weird, didn't she?' she said, gaping as she took another one of his pieces of luggage.

He just shrugged lightly and Melissa sighed, walking away from him as he picked up the last two bags. He followed her to her car, an old MG model, and watched her as she threw the two pieces of his luggage into the trunk. After throwing his pieces in, he went around to the passenger's side and buckled in, glancing over at her.

'I can take care of myself, you know that,' he said carefully as he placed his briefcase down by his feet. 'You don't have to be so worried.'

'You're overestimating yourself,' she muttered as she backed out of the parking space. 'You're like a brother to me, Jackson. I don't want you to get hurt, especially not by someone like Vasylyna Melinyshyn.'

'We keep it like a business transaction, if that helps ease your worry,' he replied quite matter-of-factly. 'She kills someone, gets lusty…'

'Yeah, that's enough, thanks,' Melissa said, speeding out onto the Interstate as he realised he was sitting on top of yet another non-descript manila folder.

---

A quick knock was Jackson's only warning before his dorm room door flew open and a frazzled-looking classmate stuck his head in.

'Jackson, holy crap! The Secretary of Commerce was just killed in a plane crash in Croatia!' he said quickly, his eyes wide. 'Come on, man, we're all watching it on the television in the common room!'

'News travels fast,' said Jackson's new personal assistant over the phone line.

'Hey, Greg, I'll have to call you back later,' Jackson said, trying to look terrified and surprised about what his peer had just told him.

'Come on!'

Jackson set down the phone and followed the classmate from his dorm room to the commons. There was a large television set up on one end of the room with most of the dorm had gathered around it. For safety's sake, Jackson kept his face delightfully emotionless as the reporter gave wonderfully erroneous second-hand witness testimony of the plane crash. There were little murmurings around the room as Jackson leaned back against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, but he didn't pay attention to them until one of the other students, a freshman, caught his attention.

'It was a set-up. Someone paid for Brown to be killed.'

He tensed ever so slightly, looking over at the freshman with an uninterested glance. 'What do you mean?'

The freshman turned his attention to Jackson sharply. 'Isn't it obvious? It's a conspiracy.'

'A conspiracy,' Jackson said, his lips curling up into a patronising smile. 'Enlighten me.'

'Do you actually think that President Clinton didn't want Brown dead?' the younger boy asked, his hands on his hips. 'Do you know how many people connected to him have been killed in the last ten years?'

Jackson scratched his nose, looking at the ceiling, feigning thought. 'Forty-four?'

The boy gave him a worried look. 'G—good guess.'

The dark-haired eighteen-year-old shrugged. 'I try.'

'Do you watch these things carefully or something?'

'You could say that,' he said with a hint of mystery. 'I have a vested interest in the goings-on of the political world.'

'Are you going into politics?' the boy asked, raising an eyebrow.

'No, management,' he said with a little laugh. 'I have better things to do than waste my time trying to make myself appealing to voters.'

'Oh, but all the women would vote for you, Mr Rippner,' said Melissa, coming into the room. 'Jacks, I looked in your room for you, but I guess someone already told you abou—'

'You're Jackson Rippner?' interrupted the freshman, but it wasn't the usual excited tone that Jackson expected from the people who met him at Leelanau.

'Yeah, he's Jackson Rippner,' replied Melissa, narrowing her eyes as she stepped between Jackson and the freshman. 'What of it?'

'You killed your parents when you were little,' he said, glaring over Melissa's shoulder at Jackson. 'It was all over the news. And then you tried to kill your cousin and they sent you to a mental institution for like four years.'

Melissa reached back and instinctively grabbed Jackson's forearm. The people who had previously been watching the television were now all focused on the development near the wall, everyone looking nervously between Jackson and the freshman. Jackson's jaw was set, and anyone could tell it was taking everything in him not to just reach over Melissa and choke the boy in front of him.

'Quit talking out your ass, Kevin,' said one of Jackson's classmates from the couch.

'I'm not talking out my ass!' said Kevin, holding out his hand at Jackson, flailing it towards him emphatically. 'I went to the same school as his cousin. He tried to kill a couple of kids at the psychiatric centre too. It was all over the news!'

It was very uncomfortable in the room as Melissa backed up and pulled Jackson's arms around her waist in an attempt to diffuse the almost palpable anger emanating from him.

'I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue,' Jackson said in a warning tone from behind the redhead. She craned her head to see him staring Kevin down.

Kevin gulped audibly before backing up some. 'Of course.'

Melissa pressed herself harder against Jackson to take a better grip on him, but the shorter man didn't make any attempt to move towards the freshman. Most of the other people in the room were carefully trying to return to watching the television, a couple remarking loudly about something the reporter had just said. The freshman ran his hand through his hair nervously, almost inadvertently taking a step and a half away from Jackson. Melissa intervened again.

'Jacks, why don't we go for a walk, okay?' she asked softly, turning to face him with a pleading look.

He nodded and let her lead him out of the building to the muddy landscape of post-winter northern Michigan. They went down the hill leading to the lake, Melissa looking back every now and then to assure that no one from the dorm was following them. Her hand stayed attached firmly to his forearm until they came to an outcropping of trees and the school grounds disappeared into foliage. His body relaxed as they got into deeper woods and Melissa let go of his forearm, going ahead of him to cross her arms and look into the darkness beyond them.

'What did you want to talk about?' he asked her back.

She turned. 'Are you okay?'

'Why would I not be okay?' he countered, giving her an odd look.

'You did a good job in there,' she whispered self-consciously, pressing her hand to the back of her neck. 'Kept a very even temper.'

His face changed from emotionless to vaguely angry. 'What did you want to talk about, Bayley?'

'My dad called. He was in a meeting with the head of the organisation when the news came in about the Brown assignment going through, and he said that the Head was really pleased with the finesse you showed in planning. Dad thinks you're well on your way to being the golden boy of the society,' she said, her tone a bit perturbed. 'I just wanted to congratulate you on a job well done.'

'Thanks,' he replied, his voice icy.

She seemed upset at his response, rubbing her left arm with her right hand as she looked down at the ground. Usually in their fights, she always came out with the upper hand, having more experience in their world despite having the relatively low-rank job of forger. But this time, she hadn't been able to break him in her normal fashion, and this sudden change quite honestly hurt her as much as he could have hurt her by reeling back and hitting her across the face. She looked up as his footsteps squashed across the muddy ground, expecting to see him walking away from her, but instead came up to his lips. He locked his lips to hers harshly, holding the back of her head tightly as he forced open her lips and kissed deeply.

Melissa was caught by surprise and opened her eyes widely, giving in to the kiss before realising what was going on. Forcing her arms between them, she pushed on him strongly before he finally took his hand from the back of her head and she thrust herself away from him a few steps, her hair out of place and her hands in fists at her sides.

'_I'm not Lyna_!' she screamed, angry tears falling down her face. 'A random display of lust after a fight or a kill or anything isn't going to smooth things over with me!'

Jackson's expression didn't change at all, and that just upset her more. Her face contorted before she started taking heavy, breathy sobs, running her hands through her long auburn hair as tears ran unabashedly down her freckled face. He just stood there watching her, nothing betraying any feelings besides his left hand, which kept flexing uncomfortably to his side.

'Can't you _see_ what she's _done_?' asked Melissa fervently through her tears.

'Made me a better employee of the organisation?' Jackson asked sharply, but he choked mid-way through the statement. 'Sharena said that the best…'

As he stopped speaking, she paused with her hands holding handfuls of hair at her temples, a hopeful look on her face as she tried to see if Jackson's face had broken into a nostalgic smile or something, but she was just faced with the same unemotional look she'd seen when she first entered the common room of his dorm. If he had any real emotions regarding the matter, he was doing a great job of masking them.

'She's made you into a drone,' Melissa said weakly, dropping her fingertips to cover her mouth lightly. 'Just like her.'

'Stop talking about her that way,' Jackson said in the same warning tone he'd used with Kevin. 'I swear to God, Melissa, if you keep talking about her that way, I'll—'

A fresh wave of sobs began, stopping his tirade. 'Jackson—'

'We're finished here,' he said, giving her a disgusted look. 'I don't want to see your face again until I need you.'

She looked at him, stepping forward to reach out and brush his upper arm. 'Jackson, please. I'm… I'm just worried about you… you know I'm always worried.'

A flicker of sadness crossed his face before resigning itself just to his eyes. Looking into them deeply, she could see that he wanted to just hug her like the sister she'd become to him over the last three years, but he held back. They stood staring each other down for a few minutes, Melissa visually urging him to show some affection, some recognition of the bond they'd formed, but he gave nothing except the little sheen hiding in the depths of his clear blue eyes. Dropping her hand, she stepped past him, neither saying a word as she walked back towards the lake, leaving Jackson alone in the clearing.


	9. 17 July 1996

A/N: There are already 145 pages in Bejerot's Diagnosis and Jackson and Lisa haven't even left Miami.

This story is _long_.

---

It was the middle of July before Jackson heard from the organisation. The last month of high school had gone by uncomfortably, he and Melissa at odds with each other, but once they were jetted off to Miami, the tensions eased a bit. Although placed in the same apartment near the campus of Miami-Dade, their schedules varied immensely. Melissa preferred working on her assignments during the day so her eyes wouldn't be as strained by the computer screen, and he worked best under the cover of night. They typically ate dinner with each other, Melissa ending her day as he began his, but once they began to work with a research analyst from the organisation that she got on well with him, they saw less and less of each other.

On a horribly hot and humid night in July, he'd fallen asleep on a pillow of papers that were for his next assignment, the assassination of a Bulgarian government official, and was jarred awake by the phone on his desk ringing loudly by his head. He shot up, cracking his head on the edge of his lamp, and cursed lightly before picking up the receiver.

'Rippner.'

'Monsieur Rippner,' said an unfamiliar but smooth and polished voice on the other end. '_C'est votre patron_.'

Jackson was suddenly very awake. '_Monsieur, enchanté_.'

'I've an assignment for you,' the man continued in French. 'You'll need to catch the soonest flight from Miami to Tehran to meet your team.'

'My team?' Jackson asked softly, squeezing the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger.

'_Ouais_,' the boss continued. 'We need a quick job managed. You'll work directly with the assassination squad to accomplish the task as soon as possible. I'll fax you a few key facts within the next few hours, but I expect you to contact your personal assistant immediately to make travel arrangements.'

'Yes sir,' said Jackson, glancing over at the clock. 'I'll get Greg right on the case.'

'I want you to use your Canadian passport for this. It will make it easier for you to enter Iran.'

'I'll make sure that Greg uses that identity, thank you sir.'

'Keep up the good work, Rippner,' said the man, a smile apparent in his voice.

'I will.'

There was a click, and the line went dead as a timid knock sounded on his door. 'Jacks? Are you still awake?'

He took his finger off of the telephone hook and placed the receiver back in the cradle. 'Come in, Melissa.'

The door opened and she peeked in, assuring that he was actually awake and working rather than just sitting up in bed because she'd woken him up. Slipping in the door, she closed it quietly behind her and leaned back against it.

'Do you need something?' he asked, trying his best to appear nonchalant, but really being vaguely excited that she was paying him a visit.

Without a word, she came over to him and held out her left hand where a little diamond was gleaming. He reached out and took her hand lightly, examining the ring with his brow slightly furrowed. She looked down at him, biting her bottom lip before retracting her hand and holding it to her chest.

'He proposed tonight at dinner,' she said to the top of his head as he stared at the place where her hand had been. 'I said yes.'

He looked up at her suddenly, his eyes hollow as he spoke in a choked voice. 'You barely know him.'

'Sometimes time doesn't matter,' she said with a smile, bending down to sit on her knees. 'You just know that something's right, and you don't have to spend a lot of time deliberating.'

She stretched her neck, placing her chin on his knees and looking up to smile at him.

'I love him.'

Looking into her eyes, his face softened and he reached up to run his fingers through her hair. 'Congratulations, Peach.'

Reaching out, she grabbed his legs and hugged them tightly. 'That's more like it.'

He leaned down and kissed her lightly atop her head. 'I'm leaving to go to Tehran tomorrow. I don't know when I'll be back.'

'Tehran?' she asked from against his legs. 'Why Tehran?'

'The boss just called me and told me to get on the earliest plane out to Iran. I was about to call Greg to buy plane tickets when you walked in.'

'Do I need to make anything?' she asked, trying to raise her head, but he kept his forehead against the top of her head to stop her from doing so.

'Nothing,' he said lightly.

---

'Howland.'

Jackson looked out at the bright landscape of Tehran two days later. 'Greg, it's Jackson. I've just landed in Tehran; who do I look for?'

There was typing in the background. 'They haven't assigned you to someone you know. This is a joint assignment; you'll be working for the team created by the people who hired you to manage.'

He raised an eyebrow. 'I've never heard of a joint assignment.'

'They're not common,' the man assured him. 'You'll be looking for a man named Reza, a tall Lebanese in his late thirties. He'll be wearing a business suit and carrying a copy of the Iran Daily.'

Jackson looked at the business travellers around him. 'That… really doesn't narrow it down.'

'He'll be waiting by the baggage claim for the seven-fifteen from Paris, holding up the newspaper to shield his eyes from the sun as he looks at the baggage carousel and checks the tags of a couple of bags our people put on in France.'

'That's more like it,' Jackson replied, pressing his cell phone close to his face as he made his way quickly to the baggage claim. From a distance, he could see the man and smiled a bit. 'Found him. Please alert the organisation and expect a report once the assignment is complete.'

He pushed the end button before there was a reply and slipped the phone into his bag. He took long strides towards the exit as he pulled out his sunglasses but dropped them right before he got to Reza. The Lebanese man noticed the sign and looked over at Jackson, who had bent down to retrieve his glasses.

'Problems finding your bag?' Jackson asked the man as he straightened himself, popping the lens back into the frames of his sunglasses.

'They must have forgotten to put it on the plane in Paris,' Reza replied, putting his copy of the Iran Daily under his arm. 'It will probably come on the next flight.'

'Hopefully,' Jackson replied, slipping his sunglasses on. 'Do you at least live around here so they can send it to you when it gets here?'

Reza nodded slowly. 'I live right near the Bazaar. There are a lot of tourists every day, but it is very convenient.'

'Ah, I'm staying near the Bazaar while I'm here.'

'Is that so?' Reza asked, leaning down to pick up his briefcase from the floor next to his feet. 'Perhaps you would care for a ride?'

'Oh, I couldn't intrude,' said Jackson as he placed his hands in front of him.

'Really, it is fine. I am sure you do not speak Farsi, and it would be easier for you to just take a ride right now and use a taxi to come back at the end of your trip when you know the city better.'

'In that case, I'm very thankful.'

Jackson followed Reza out of the terminal and to a parking structure near the airport. They didn't speak a word to each other as they drove away, mixing into the morning traffic as Jackson pulled out his glasses case and replaced the sunglasses on his face with his prescription glasses. Reza looked over at him with distaste.

'They told me they were going to send a professional,' Reza spat, swerving through traffic. 'But you are nothing but a school boy.'

Blue eyes turned on the Lebanese man. 'I assure you, I am a professional.'

'You can not be any older than eighteen,' hissed Reza, glaring over at Jackson.

'You're right, I've just turned eighteen a couple of months ago,' Jackson said honestly, slipping his glasses case back into his briefcase. 'But sometimes age doesn't matter. This business is reliant on ingenuity which is something that I have plenty of.'

'What are your credentials?' Reza asked with an air of what Melissa would best define as 'general douchebaggery.'

'I managed the Rabin and Hebborn assassinations,' Jackson said, setting his jaw. 'In addition to April's plane crash in Croatia that killed Secretary Brown and the other thirty-something people on board.'

Reza gripped the steering wheel tighter, seemingly upset that Jackson was able to pull out such high-profile assignments as those. 'The file is under your seat. We'd like to put your plan in effect within the next twenty-four hours.'

With a quick glare at Reza, Jackson reached under his seat and pulled out the classic manila folder, flipping it open on his lap. As they sped along, he glanced over all of the information, creating a workable plan in his head. It was a businessman in his early forties, two children, married. He'd become involved in the government as of recently and had threatened the interests of the wife of one of the members of Reza's group, which Jackson was surprised to notice wasn't mentioned anywhere by name. Despite paying for the help, they obviously didn't trust the World Society, and for a moment, this fact made him very uncomfortable. He shook it off and went back to synthesising the information: the man always worked late nights at his office and took the same route to and from work. Apparently he had absolutely no idea that he'd disturbed anyone with his policies or he'd have changed something about his daily tasks.

'I can have the final plan for you in ten hours,' Jackson said confidently, closing the file and putting it in his briefcase. 'Would your men be ready to participate in the kidnapping this evening?'

'Of course,' Reza replied, driving past the Bazaar. 'We will be extremely upset, however, if we gather and you do not provide the plan.'

When Jackson looked over at Reza, the man was giving him a dark look, but it didn't faze him. Rather, he suppressed the urge to roll his eyes and then just looked back at the road. 'I'll have your plan, you can be sure of that.'

---

'Good evening, sir.'

The Persian businessman stepped towards the car, raising his eyebrow at the driver. 'Good evening… where is Kamyar?'

Reza smiled lightly at the man, thinking about the dead driver curled up in the trunk of the Mercedes. 'He fell ill earlier in the day. His doctor believes it may be food poisoning, but he should be better in a couple of days. The agency sent me to replace him.'

The man still seemed hesitant, but he took a careful step towards the car anyway, scanning the backseat before getting in and setting his briefcase next to him. Reza closed the door and walked around to the driver's side, slipping in and starting the vehicle. They drove along quietly before Reza took a sharp turn onto the Bozorgrah-e-Afriqa and the businessman looked around, confused.

'I'm afraid you must have received the wrong directions,' he said with an uncomfortable smile, looking back at the Bozorgrah-e-Shahid Hemmat. 'Kamyar usually cuts through the Park-e-Ayatollah Taleqani… it's the fastest way to get to my home.'

Reza slammed on the brakes and the businessman's briefcase went flying forward just a moment before the other back door opened and a thin Caucasian man stepped in, sitting beside him with a serious look on his pale face. The doors locked and the car sped off again as the businessman pressed himself against his door.

'Mr Fathi,' said Jackson, offering his hand to the older man. 'A pleasure to meet you.'

'What's going on?' the man asked fearfully, ignoring Jackson's outstretched hand.

Jackson frowned and took his hand back, leaning back against the seat. 'Well, it should be obvious that you're being kidnapped.'

'Kidnapped?' asked Mr Fathi, looking between Jackson and Reza. 'What… what have I done?'

'You've intervened against Anooseh Mugniyah,' replied Reza in angry Farsi, glaring at the man from the rear-view mirror. 'You're being kidnapped now, but don't worry, you won't be held for long – before morning, you'll be dead.'

Tears formed at the corners of the businessman's eyes and Jackson looked at Reza questioningly. 'What did you tell him?'

'The truth of the matter,' Reza responded, turning quickly onto another street. A minute later, they pulled up to a warehouse and were immediately surrounded by six armed men.

The businessman was pulled harshly from the car and shoved towards the warehouse as Jackson, carrying Mr Fathi's briefcase, followed, watching Reza's reactions to the entire process. They all walked in the large sliding doors of the place and slammed them shut, locking them before taking Mr Fathi to a back room that had previously been used as a shipping office.

'I don't even know who Anooseh Mugniyah is!' said Mr Fathi, tears running down his face. 'How could I make threats against someone I don't know?'

Jackson looked at the group of people before stepping back to lean against the wall. He didn't speak a single word of Farsi, so beyond planning, he was pretty much hopeless. A heated conversation broke out between Reza and Fathi, and, lulled by the unknown language, Jackson let his mind wander until a loud beeping from his hands brought him back to reality. At first, he thought it was his cell phone, but he quickly found that it was Fathi's ringing from the recesses of his briefcase. He dug out the phone and looked at it questioningly before focusing his attention at Fathi.

'Who's calling?' he asked, holding the phone up as he crossed the room to press it in Fathi's face.

'My wife,' Fathi replied with a choked sob. 'The children are going to bed, and I sing to them every night before they go to sleep.'

Jackson glanced at Reza for just a moment before pressing the speak button on the phone and holding it to Fathi's ear, the look on his face telling him not to try anything cute. Fathi regained his composure and spoke calmly to his wife in smooth Farsi. Every few seconds, Jackson looked back at Reza to make sure that Fathi wasn't betraying anything, but considering that Reza was holding an AK-47, he figured that if Fathi did say anything, he'd know about it pretty quickly.

There was a pause and Jackson looked into Fathi's eyes. The older man licked his lips before changing his voice to the higher-pitched tone that parents use with their young children. Jackson could hear young voices chattering on the other end, and in a moment, Fathi started singing an Iranian lullaby softly. Jackson, to his surprise, felt as though a load of ice had been dropped into the pit of his stomach, but he didn't let anyone around him know that the wavering tenor was bothering him. It was the longest couple of minutes of his life, listening to the man sing, and even a couple of the assassins around him were turning away uncomfortably. The song stopped and Fathi looked sadly at Jackson before whispering sweetly into the phone and then dropping his head.

Hesitantly, Jackson pulled the phone away from his ear and pushed the end button, holding the phone tightly in his hand as he watched Fathi starting to cry again softly. The room was silent except for Fathi's crying, but after a moment, there was the sound of a gun being raised and Jackson looked back, startled, as Reza squeezed the trigger of his gun and peppered Fathi with bullets before Jackson could even make a noise. Fathi slumped forward in his seat and Jackson backed up a couple of steps, dropping the cell phone into a pool of blood near his feet. Some of the men in the room backed up, looking between Fathi and Reza, complete shock apparent on their faces.

'This wasn't part of my plan,' seethed Jackson, glaring at Reza.

'And it was not part of my plan to pull in a third party,' Reza replied, turning the gun on Jackson. 'It is a pity that your organisation knows where you are, because if it were up to me, I would kill you just as I killed Fathi.'

Jackson's glare didn't break, and after a moment, Reza barked an order to the men and a couple of them dragged Jackson to the alley outside of the warehouse and shoved him in the car. They didn't actually drive anywhere for a few minutes, and for a short while, Jackson thought that Reza had ordered them to execute him despite what he'd said back in the office. When a hand reached back to him, he instinctively cringed back only to find that one of the men was offering him a cigarette.

'_Sigaar_?' asked the man, holding it up to Jackson.

At first, Jackson was hesitant to accept, but after considering it for a moment, he took the cigarette and placed it between his lips. The man gave him a light, and then they drove away from the warehouse, all three smoking a bit uncomfortably. Jackson took nervous drags of the cigarette, looking out at the dark roads of Tehran as he turned over in his head how things had gone that night. He wasn't sure what bothered him the most: the fact that someone who was supposed to be a subordinate went against the set plan, that the thought of Fathi's singing made that icy terror return to his stomach, or the issue that more than anything at that point in time, he'd have loved to ravage Lyna.

---

Jackson was stuck on the red-eye from New York City to Miami, so by the time he got home and threw his keys on the small table by the door, the apartment was completely silent. He dropped his briefcase and was surprised as Melissa popped up groggily from the couch, a gun in her hands. He held his hands up and she grunted, dropping the gun on the table behind the couch and slipping back down onto the cushions, her hand still propped over the gun.

'Have a good time in Iran?' she asked, her voice muffled by the pillows.

'Not especially,' he said, locking the door and then throwing his blazer towards the couch.

Melissa's hand crept over to take the blazer and he could hear her inhale deeply into the fabric. 'Shower, now.'

'I'll take one in the morning,' he groaned. 'It's not like you have to sleep with me.'

'I washed your sheets whilst you were gone,' she replied before dropping the blazer onto the floor beside the couch. 'Don't get them all funky.'

'I didn't ask you to clean my sheets, Mel,' he said darkly as he untucked his dress shirt.

'I was feeling domestic,' she grunted, turning over and burying her face back into the cushions.

'Goodnight, Peach,' he said as he walked past her to the bedroom, closing the door softly behind him. She smiled against the pillow when the shower turned on a few minutes later.


	10. 1 June 1998

1997 was incredibly slow in the world of flashy assassinations. At the beginning of the year, Jackson and a team of managers from around the world laid out the framework for the massacres of the Algerian Civil War; groups of the best assassins from each region including Lyna were sent to oversee the progression. Starting in March, Jackson was assigned a new assassin partner, Ian Dower, who only took jobs on the American continent. There were only two assassinations that made any news feeds that year, however: the murder of Houston socialite Doris Angleton and the New Year's Eve death of Michael Kennedy, which Jackson assured himself would be at the top of his all-time favourites list for many years to come—there was nothing better than blackmail _and_ an eventual well-planned 'accidental' death.'

Around his twenty-first birthday, Jackson began planning the death of Sani Abacha, president of Nigeria. As soon as college was out for the term, Jackson jetted off to spend the summer in Berlin fitted with the identity of a South African graduate student. He lived in an apartment on the outskirts of the city in the neighbourhood of Mariendorf, about a ten-minute walk from the Alt-Mariendorf U-Bahn station. Lyna lived two floors down and diagonally from his apartment, but she would disappear for long stretches of time, and they rarely saw each other. It was really only on the day that he showed up see her off to Benin that they had a chance to speak.

'Where's your luggage?' he asked, giving her a glare as he stepped up.

'You've been overruled,' she said sleekly, smirking. 'The patron wants you to handle this yourself.'

'That wasn't the plan.'

'Sometimes plans change.'

'Well…' he replied, looking around wildly. 'I—'

'You're a good-looking boy, Jackson. I'm sure you know what you're supposed to do in this situation.'

Pressing a folded piece of paper into his hand, Lyna leaned forward and kissed him, pulling on his hair harshly as she did so.

'I hope I've trained you well,' she muttered, pinching his earlobe before turning and walking out of the Tegel airport.

He watched after her for a moment until an announcement for the boarding of his flight to Paris came over the intercom. Grumbling, he crunched the paper before shoving it into his briefcase and blustering over to the ticket counter, putting down his South African passport and ticket with a smack. The ticket agent gave him an uncomfortable smile before looking at the name.

'Mr Plaatje,' she said, scanning his ticket. 'Enjoy your time in Paris.'

'I won't be there long,' he snapped back in a heavy South African accent, glaring at her. 'Paris to Lyon, Lyon to Casablanca, Casablanca to Lomé, and Lomé to Cotonou.'

She just gave him the same patronising smile. 'Enjoy your flight.'

---

At four o'clock the next morning, Jackson laid awake in his hotel room exhausted from his travels but unable to sleep. The hotel phone was pressed to his ear as he looked up at the ceiling, studying the stucco. The connection beeped over and over again, a tone rather than actual ringing, until there was a little click on the other end and an exhausted voice answered.

'Hello?'

'Hey.'

'Jacks?' Melissa asked, her voice hoarse. He could hear her turn over in her sheets and pick up her watch. 'It's eleven at night.'

'You go to bed too early,' he replied. 'I'm in Benin.'

'Benin… why are you in Benin?'

'I have an assignment in Nigeria.'

'And they made you go?' she asked softly, and he could tell she'd laid the receiver on her face so she didn't have to hold it anymore.

'Lyna told me that headquarters changed my plan,' he replied, looking over at the pile of papers he'd been working with until recently. 'I've had to scrap it and redo it from scratch.'

'They do that,' she sighed into the receiver. 'It tests how well you can think on your feet because things can go wrong at any time and you may have to improvise. You wouldn't believe how many times Mum would disappear in the middle of the night because Poulain called her personally and told her to come deal with things on her own.'

He grumbled. 'Wonderful.'

'So what are you going to do?'

Jackson reached over and picked over the piece of paper that Lyna had put in his hand at Tegel. 'Well… Lyna gave me the address of a brothel in Abuja and wrote a name under it: Surabhi Kharbanda.'

'I used to have a friend named Surabhi,' said Melissa lazily. 'She said her name meant "a wish-granting cow" or something along those lines.'

Jackson was quiet for a second. 'You're exhausted.'

'Really,' she replied sarcastically.

'I'm going to Abuja tomorrow,' he said. 'Lyna told me to use what she's taught me, so I'll probably work on seducing this Surabhi. I know that Abacha likes Indian girls from the profile Robert sent me, so…'

'Be careful,' she said softly. 'Goodnight, Jacks.'

'Goodnight, Peach.'

And he went back to staring at the ceiling.

---

Despite being under a dictatorship, the Nigerian capital of Abuja was very lively and festive on weekend nights. In the northwest district, Maitama, the NICON Hilton hotel stuck out majestically, a lush lawn around it and a golf course nearly adjacent. Directly east was the Wuse district, a sharp contrast from the beautiful, well-groomed Maitama. When Jackson had given the driver the address of the place, the man had asked Jackson if perhaps he'd written the wrong address, and now that they were actually _in_ Wuse, he was beginning to wonder if Lyna had given him the right location. Blue eyes looked questionably out at the women walking along the Addis Ababa Crescent at the late time, watching carefully to assure that the driver hadn't missed the location written on the paper.

'Here it is, sir,' said the driver, looking back at Jackson and handing him the paper with the prostitute's name on it. 'Are you sure you want to be dropped off here?'

'Yes,' said Jackson, but really, looking at the streetwalkers, he wasn't that sure.

'When you need to go back to the Hilton, please just call the hotel and they'll send whoever's on duty at the time.'

'Thank you,' he replied, pressing some paper Naira into the driver's hand before stepping out to the sidewalk and looking up at the building in front of him.

He stood there until the car drove away and a man walked out with a nearly diseased-looking prostitute. Jackson almost recoiled, but rather just moved far out of his way to get into the building, his obsessive childhood tendencies pulling themselves out again. He waited until someone else opened the door and then walked in, making sure to not touch the door. Once inside, he was displeased to see there was, in fact, another door to go through, so he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and opened it as daintily as possible.

Inside, the main lounge appeared slightly less terrifying. It was much like any normal club: music thumping, people socialising around high tables, drunks flirting badly at the bar. Jackson frowned—would this really be the place for a military dictator to acquire his prostitutes? He walked cautiously around, receiving a couple of interested head-to-toe looks from scantily clad women that he completely ignored. Dropping his handkerchief on the floor (after all, how would he justify using it anywhere near his face after using it on _that_ door handle?), he turned his head and watched in interest as a well dressed woman crossed the dance floor and went in a door by one of the huge woofers against the far wall. Raising an eyebrow, he walked over to the door and tried the handle, only to realise it was locked. As he took his hand off of the handle, a hand clamped onto his shoulder.

'Do you need something?' asked a female voice, and Jackson froze.

Expecting a brawny female bouncer, he instead turned to see a short, black woman dressed in very skimpy clothing. 'Pardon me?'

She gave him a toothy smile. 'A foreign boy, hm? Here for the nightlife?'

'No, I'm…' he started, pulling out the piece of paper with the address and name on it. 'Well… actually…'

The woman looked down at the paper. 'Ooh, big spender.'

'Do you know who she is?' he asked, and the woman gave him a questioning half-glare. 'I'm up from South Africa and one of my friends in Benin has had her escort him before. She comes highly recommended.'

Her face melted into a smile again. 'Of course she does, but you'll have to pay upfront.'

'I wouldn't do it any other way,' Jackson replied smoothly.

'What are you wanting?'

'Just the company.'

The woman laughed heartily. 'Sure.'

Jackson gave her an uncomfortable and slightly disgusted smile. In response, she reached forward and unlocked the door, allowing him to walk in to the much nicer antechamber of the Abuja underworld. As the door closed, the loud music faded to a pounding bass line and the woman walked past him, going up to the prostitute that Jackson had seen a few minutes earlier.

'Is Surabhi back yet?'

The prostitute looked at Jackson with a demure smile. 'If this is the guy she'll get, then yeah, she's in.'

'Well then get her,' said the woman, obviously their pimp.

She nodded and disappeared behind a curtain, leaving Jackson alone with the pimp. The woman was overtly looking him over, taking in his appearance from the stylish glasses to the pressed suit and shined shoes.

'So, what do you do?'

'I'm in graduate school,' he replied, putting his hands in his pockets.

'Pretty well-dressed for a student,' she said, raising an eyebrow.

'My family's in diamonds,' he said with a smile.

The woman's eyes sparkled. 'How lovely.'

The curtain pulled open again and an Indian woman looked out. She was wearing a_ choli_ blouse and a _zadosi_-embroidered red _lehenga_ that dragged on the floor behind her. As she came through the curtain, she wrapped a gossamer _dupatta_ around her upper arms and looked between Jackson and the woman. Flexing his jaw, Jackson looked from her strong Indian-featured face down to her stomach exposed between the pieces of the _ghagara choli. _She looked at him with familiar detachment before flipping her dark brown curly hair over her shoulder, her long _jhumka _earrings swinging.

'This is him?' she asked in a heavily accented voice.

'Yes, this is…?'

'Daniel Plaatje,' Jackson responded.

'South Africa,' Surabhi guessed accurately.

'His family's in the _diamond_ industry,' the pimp said.

Surabhi's disinterest faded completely and she suddenly moved over to Jackson, lacing her arms around his neck as she gave him the same demure smile the other prostitute had. 'So, Daniel… what are we going to do tonight?'

He awkwardly reached down and placed his hands on her hips, looking into her heavily made-up eyes. 'I was thinking we might just go back to my hotel.'

Her eyes grew dark. 'That will cost you.'

'To sit around and talk at the bar?' he asked with an innocent smile.

The lusty woman reappeared. 'That can be arranged very easily.'

Jackson's smile widened and she ran her hands up through his hair. 'Do I pay you or her?'

'I'll take it,' the pimp said, holding out her hand. 'For a night in the lovely Surabhi's company, 68,500 Naira.'

Surabhi stepped to the side and watched with greedy eyes as Jackson pulled out his wallet, opening it to reveal masses of bills and South African-issued travellers cheques. Mixed in were both Naira and Rands. When the pimp saw this, she reached out and put a hand over his.

'We'll also accept Rands,' she said, nearly frothing at the mouth over the possibility of taking a stronger currency.

'In Rands then,' he replied, fishing out 3,500 Rand. The woman took it from him quickly.

'A pleasure doing business with you, Mr Plaatje.'


	11. 8 June 1998

A/N: I'm on page 232 of Bejerot's Diagnosis and Lisa and Jackson have just now left Miami. SO. LONG.

---

For being such an expensive whore, Surabhi didn't have the best disposition, and if Jackson didn't know any better, he'd have sworn that Lyna specifically gave him her name on purpose. The eight days he wined and dined her were the longest of his entire life to that point and he was fairly certain the precedent would stand for years to come. All she seemed to talk about was herself, her clothes, her jewellery, his money, and his fake diamond mines. Having become a relatively good actor over the last few years, he was able to muster a smile and treat her like more of a person than she bothered treating him. Really, all that kept him going was the knowledge that the money he was spending on her wasn't his own—if he bought himself a prostitute, she was going to at least service him every now and then.

By the third day of deliberations, Jackson found out from her boasting that she went to the presidential villa every other Saturday with a couple of other girls from the same place he'd picked her up. The next time was going to be that coming Saturday, and once Jackson realised that if he didn't get this done, he was going to have to spend another two weeks with her, he became more forceful with her. With a call to regional headquarters back in Cotonou, he was able to attain a pair of stunning diamond and pearl earrings that he presented to her on the fifth night and a lovely pearl necklace on the sixth. Later that night he gave her another 'pearl necklace,' much to his college student pleasure.

She actually slept in his hotel room on the sixth night, and on Friday, 7 June, they spent the entire day around Maitama buying expensive clothes to match her new jewellery. As long as he kept giving her gifts, she kept at least falsely warming up to him, trusting him, so when she announced that she was going to be gone the whole day on Saturday, he was quick to produce a bottle of Champagne Krug Clos du Mesnil for her to give as a gift to President Abacha. She accepted gracefully and as a last minute thought, he added that she should be sure to try some of it also when it was served. With just a little pat on his face and that stereotypical prostitute look she was so fond of, she finally left his suite at the NICON Hilton and he threw himself down on the bed, sneezing at the aura of sandalwood she left behind and thanking God he'd never have to see her face again unless it somehow came out on the news.

The next few hours were completely nerve-wracking for Jackson. Every sound he heard outside his door set him on edge. At any moment he expected Abacha's armed guards to storm in to take him to execution, but the entire afternoon passed without issue. As the sun went down, Jackson went onto his balcony and started up on the second pack of cigarettes he'd consumed that day, looking out towards the presidential palace with half-closed eyes as he punched in a number and pushed the talk button on his cell phone.

'Bayley-Hudson.'

'Hey Peach,' he said, his voice slightly shaky as he took a drag at the cigarette.

'Jacks, what's wrong?' she asked, and he could hear her turn off the kitchen sink. 'Do I need to call the organisation for you?'

'No, no,' he replied, rubbing his forehead with his three free fingers, still holding tenaciously to the cigarette. 'I'm just paranoid, it's all right.'

'Did something happen?'

'No, and that's what I'm worried about.'

'Well… it is a dictatorship. If the dictator dies, it's probably not going to make the news very quickly,' she said quickly. 'Wait… what did you end up doing?'

He looked around before whispering into the phone. 'Sending in a prostitute with poisoned Clos du Mesnil.'

'Classy.'

'An expensive prostitute too.'

'Very classy then,' Melissa said and he could tell she was smiling by her tone. 'Who did you play this time?'

'Daniel Plaatje, graduate student and heir to a diamond mining fortune.'

Melissa laughed very loudly. 'Diamond mining? That's a load of shit if I ever heard it.'

'This woman was just self-concerned enough to ignore implausibility.'

'Was?' she asked before groaning. 'Oh, Jackson, you told her to drink the champagne too, didn't you?'

A laugh was his answer and she sighed loudly. 'If I'm assigned to do a job, I'm going to take it all the way to the bitter end.'

'Take no prisoners,' she said dryly.

There was silence between them for a few minutes and all she could hear was him taking an occasional drag at his cigarette and blowing the smoke out smoothly.

'Listen, get some room service, turn on the television, and if there's nothing about it by the time you're finished with dinner, go to sleep,' she said. 'Don't worry about it anymore; by tomorrow, everything will be figured out.'

'Or I'll be dead.'

'Or you'll be dead, yeah,' she said brightly. 'Have a nice night.'

'You too,' he said with a grimace.

---

The next morning when Jackson woke up, he started so badly that he fell off of the bed and onto the tray of dishes from the night before. Very glad that he'd put the metal plate cover back over the porcelain, he glared up at the bed, or more specifically the woman in the bed. She smirked at him.

'I thought you might want a little company.'

Jackson looked over at the television, which was tuned into the BBC News Network. Sani Abacha's picture was in the top left hand side of the screen and although the sound was muted, the closed captioning was rolling across the bottom of the screen steadily. It had all been attributed to a heart attack and there was no mention of the three prostitutes that Jackson knew had been there—he had a feeling they would be coming up in news stories in the future, but now was no time for that. He just stared at the screen soaking up everything about his solo victory.

'Peachy,' he murmured as he rubbed his tailbone, walking over towards the television.

'You've been given a bonus,' she purred in her thick accent.

He turned to look at her coldly. 'That bonus better be in cash, not in kind.'

She gave him a pouting look, putting a hand over her chest. 'You hurt me, Jackson.'

His eyes fell over her exposed breasts that peeked out over the comforter but then trailed back up to her face. The air of seduction around her was almost palpable. She tossed her head and her long, nearly black hair slipped in a sheet behind her shoulders, exposing some of the scars crisscrossing her pale skin. Pulling a long leg out from under the comforter, she licked her lips as she slowly pushed the bedding aside, looking at him with the eyes that mirrored his own. He moved towards her, placing his hands on the edge of the bed and crawling over to her, settling himself over her despite the fact that he was still wearing his pyjama pants. She ran her hands over him, giving him a dirty smirk as she scratched long marks down his chest. His face dropped slowly down towards her own, his long hair brushing her face, but right as their lips touched, he turned his head and rolled off of her, sitting on the edge of the bed. She glared at his back as he slumped forward.

'What?' she spat, sitting up and reaching over to grab his shoulder, but he stood before she could take a firm hold.

Lyna fell onto the mattress and glared after him from behind dark hair. He was moving slowly away from her, and as she pushed herself up, he pulled back his foot and kicked the room service tray with all of his force. Running a hand roughly through his hair, he stalked over to the bathroom and slammed the door behind him. A moment later, there was the steady sound of the bathtub filling and Lyna ripped at the sheets, seething as she looked between the bathroom door and the shattered dishes cast across the floor. Slipping off of the bed, she went over to the door and jiggled the handle, banging on the wood madly.

'You immature fuck!' she shrieked, slamming her fist over and over again on the door. 'Get out here and behave like a man!'

There was no response from the other side, so, growling, she went over to her dress, which was now covered in the broken room service items, and pulled it up, feeling through it with her eyebrows raised. After she'd searched every inch of the little black dress, she drug her toes through the shattered plate, pausing as a loud bang came from the bathroom. Turning, she dropped the dress and stalked back over to the bathroom door, tapping it lightly.

'Jackson…' she said in a sugary voice. 'What was that?'

There was no response, so she just pressed her ear to the door. The only thing she could hear was the running water, and a moment later, the water started creeping out from under the door. She stepped up and down in it for a second before going back to the room service mess and picking up a knife. Jabbing it between the door and the doorframe, she was able to open the door after a half-minute of intense fellowship with the lock. Looking in, she was more pissed about what she saw than upset. Jackson had taken it upon himself to shoot himself in the stomach and then lie facedown in the overflowing bathtub. A couple of long strides brought her to the tub and she ripped him out of it, throwing him down on the wet tile floor and immediately pressing down on his chest. It didn't take long for him to cough up the water he'd swallowed. Blood was pooling everywhere under his back, so once he was breathing on his own again, Lyna retrieved her cell phone and dialled the organisation's directory assistance.

'Cotonou, _s'il vous plaît_,' she said, glaring down at Jackson, who was now gritting his teeth in pain as stomach acid poured into his abdomen. '_Bonne matin_, Cotonou. One of our managers has just tried to kill himself, and I will need assistance in Abuja.'

Snapping her phone shut, Lyna kicked Jackson in the arm, but he didn't respond with much force.

'If you're going to kill yourself, at least do a good job of it, you pussy,' she hissed before leaving the room.


	12. Fall 1998

A/N: Jaka - Lisa wa dai jyuugo shou ni araware dete to omoimasu. Ima, Florida ni daigaku ni itte imasu. Yonde iru de arigatou gozaimasu!

---

'Good morning, Jackson. How are you feeling today?'

Jackson looked up from his drab scrubs to see Dr Greene walk into his Miami hospital room. It had only been a few days since he was flown out of Benin and the doctor had met him at the Miami airport to take him to the organisation's headquarters in the city. Jackson had been placed in one of the rooms reserved for injured employees and had not yet been allowed any visitors aside from Greene. The first couple of days were aimed mostly at recuperation, but the day before, Greene had assured him that they would be talking about the Abuja incident.

'I'm feeling fine, doctor. The pain has dulled incredibly.'

'Wonderful,' Greene replied. 'Now Jackson, let's get down to business.'

He waited for a response from Jackson, but he just received a blank glare.

'All right then,' he said, taking a seat beside his patient and tapping his pen on the papers clipped to the clipboard in his lap. 'Now, you spent nine days in the Nigerian capital of Abuja working on the assassination of Sani Abacha. In the end, knowing what you did about his tastes and lifestyle, you were able to poison him and the woman you sent to kill him. Everything went according to plan. Why did you try to kill yourself after a job well done?'

Jackson stared at him. 'It just seemed like the thing to do at the time.'

Greene shifted to prop his cheekbone against his hand. 'Suicide isn't something that one randomly does. There have to be other things that tied into it. You need to talk to me, Jackson.'

'There's nothing else, no special meaning. I just felt like shooting myself and then lying down face-first in the bathtub.'

'Is it about your parents?'

'Is it ever about my parents?'

'Lyna then? Or perhaps Melissa? Sharena?'

'Women are and will continue to be an ongoing issue,' he replied quite matter-of-factly. 'But I've never lied to you before and won't start now—in Abuja, I just felt the random urge to shoot myself. I'm not always dictated by my emotions.'

'You're very rarely dictated by your emotions.'

'At the time, it seemed like the logical thing to shoot and then drown myself.'

'Okay,' Greene said slowly, taking a few long notes on the clipboard before looking up again. 'But tell me Jackson, if you wanted to be efficient, why did you shoot yourself in the stomach? That has to be one of the more slow and painful ways to die.'

Jackson gave him a very cold look. 'If you have to know, I was trying to shoot myself in the chest.'

'And…?'

'I missed.'

Greene and Jackson looked at each other for a few long moments before Greene finally spoke. 'You… missed?'

'I missed.'

'You missed your chest when holding the gun at an arm's length?'

'Yes,' Jackson replied, setting his jaw.

'Professional decorum doesn't allow me to—'

'God, go ahead, laugh. It's absurd,' Jackson said, but Greene didn't laugh.

'Jackson…' he said, leaning forward. 'Do you understand that you've done something wrong here?'

Jackson rolled his eyes. 'Yes, doctor, I understand that I've done something wrong.'

'But do you understand why it's wrong? I don't feel like you have a very firm grasp of the meanings of life and death,' Greene said.

'You're not talking to a child, you know.'

'Does that insult you, Jackson? To be talked to like a child?'

He rolled his eyes again. 'Would it insult you if I hit you?'

'And that's why you're tied down,' Greene replied with a very fake smile, gesturing to the padded bindings on Jackson's wrists and ankles. 'Jackson, I'm going to start you on medication. I didn't feel it was needed until this point, but now, I think we'll need to go ahead and start a regimen. Melissa has told me that you've been nervous and anxious lately. Have you been?'

'Yes,' he said reluctantly.

'Then we'll get a medicine for anxiety disorder and another to help with your obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Do you sleep at night?'

'No, I work at night.'

'Then sleeping pills.'

'When will I work?'

'During the day when everyone else does,' Greene replied, beginning to fill out some pages in his prescription book. 'Are you depressed?'

'What? No!' Jackson replied. 'What are you trying to do here?'

'Antidepressants also,' Greene added, writing quickly. 'And I'd say you have antisocial personality disorder too. You never feel any consequence for your actions.'

'Is this was this is about? Making me feel consequences?'

Greene smiled. 'It's about making you feel better.'

---

From his hospital room, Jackson was able to teleconference with another manager on the Continent for his next assignment, the assassination of Galina Starovoitova, a Russian politician. For once in his life, the huge time change was helpful, and in the middle of the night when he preferred to be working, his colleague, Yuri Kolchin, liked to work in the early morning hours from his office in St Petersburg. Kolchin worked within Russian government, more specifically in the Main Intelligence Department of the General Staff, and had a very trusted assassin that he was prepared to use for the attack. The entire plan was to be set in motion on 20 November, which was by that point only about a month away.

Hurricane Mitch delayed Jackson's impending release, although he wasn't quite sure why because when it reached Miami, it had already been downgraded to a tropical storm and just caused a couple of days of bad rain, which everyone in the Miami area was accustomed to by this point. By the time Jackson was released from the care of Dr Greene, he had missed an entire term of college, but thanks to Melissa's note taking and videotapes of his courses, he didn't miss a term of work. Carrying a bag full of his newly prescribed medications, Jackson followed a burly driver to a car and got into the backseat. Almost immediately, he recognised the fact that they were going the wrong direction to go to his apartment. He perked up from his lazy posture and glared at the driver in the rear-view mirror.

'Didn't anyone give you directions?' he hissed. 'My apartment isn't near the water; it's inland.'

'Not anymore it isn't.'

'What is that supposed to mean?' Jackson asked, but he got no response.

As the skyline changed, he watched it closely, trying to figure out exactly where he was being driven. They were getting closer and closer to the ocean, and by the time they got off of the Interstate, Jackson had narrowed the final destination down to the four buildings that were situated along the oceanfront. The one they stopped in, however, was obviously incomplete, so when the driver parked under it, Jackson just gave him a dark look.

'You could have killed me back at the headquarters.'

The man laughed. 'Killed you? You're being moved to better housing. The patron really liked how you handled the Abacha assassination, so he's given you a bonus.'

Jackson thought back to the hotel room in Abuja nearly five months earlier; Lyna had mentioned a bonus in passing, but he didn't imagine upgraded housing as a bonus. The door opened and Jackson stepped out and was led to an elevator. The driver presented him with a keycard and Jackson scanned it; the driver provided the current code. It was silent as the lift slid up the shaft, and when the doors opened, Jackson looked in to the undecorated condominium to see a tall, grey-haired man. Although Jackson had never actually met him before, he'd seen his picture in all of the false information about the organisation that was released for the general public to digest.

'Monsieur Poulain,' Jackson said immediately, stepping out of the elevator car. '_Je suis enchanté_.'

'I was very disappointed to hear about your problems in Abuja, but Philip assures me that you're doing much better now,' Mr Poulain said in accented English, smiling at Jackson. 'I fear we are not keeping you busy enough and that you may be becoming bored.'

That seemed reasonable. 'It's a possibility, sir.'

'Then we will give you more assignments, dear boy,' he said, coming over to pat Jackson on the side of his face. 'We have several high-profile assassinations that have come to us over the last few weeks—you know, the pre-Christmas rush. There will also be more coming in post-New Year's, I'm sure of it. Perhaps you would also be interested in taking more active roles in your assignments?'

Jackson looked the man in the eyes. 'What do you mean by "active"?'

'Well, we certainly won't have you firing any guns,' the boss said with a little laugh and Jackson frowned. 'No, we would be delighted if you'd begin overseeing in the field. It will be a lot of travel, but it will keep you occupied.'

'Of course,' Jackson replied.

'Good then,' he said, and made a move to get into the elevator before Jackson turned to look at him.

'If I'm living here, where is Melissa?' he asked, furrowing his brow.

The boss gave him a serene smile. 'Living safely with her husband and baby girl far away from here.'

'Her baby—wait!'

The doors slid closed and Jackson was left staring at the cold metal, alone. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he turned around and looked about the place, but what interested him the most was the ocean view from the wall of windows across from him. He walked across the poured concrete floor and looked out at the churning sea below. No one was out because it was nearly December, so all he looked at in the dreary weather were the waves crashing on the beach. As he looked out at the endless sea, hazed by the poor visibility of the clouds, it started to rain, the droplets pattering on the huge picture windows. He let his forehead rest on the glass for a moment but was jarred from his musings by his cell phone ringing in his suit pocket. He numbly felt for it and pressed it to his face.

'Rippner.'

'Jackson, it's Robert.'

'Robert,' he said, turning away from the window with his hand in his hair. 'Where are you?'

'We've been reassigned,' Robert replied.

Something about the finality of the statement made Jackson reconsider delving for more information on the issue. 'How's Melissa?'

'She's doing fine, already back to work.'

'She didn't even tell me she was expecting.'

There was a very long period of silence. 'They told us not to tell you.'

'Why?' Jackson asked, making his way to the kitchen of the place and opening the empty refrigerator.

'Because they already knew they were transferring us,' Melissa's husband said. 'They knew back when they asked you to come to Berlin for the summer.'

'But why have you move?'

He heard Robert shift uncomfortably before answering. 'Because Melissa's assignment was over.'


	13. March and April 1999

A/N: Totally on page 280 of Bejerot's Diagnosis, and I still have 220 KB of the original file to edit. It's gonna be so long XD!

---

When Jackson came back to school in January without Melissa, tonnes of rumours began circulating. During his absence, it was well known that he'd had a nervous breakdown and was in a psychiatric hospital, but there were also murmurings that Jackson was the father of Melissa's baby despite the fact that people knew that Melissa's fiancé was a legal assistant who lived up in Pensacola. Wherever Jackson went, people would whisper noticeably, looking at him with either pity or anger. Each reminder of the fact that the organisation went behind his back so terribly just upset him more, making him more and more stoic, and pretty soon he'd managed to alienate the few friends that he shared with his former roommate.

Before February even arrived, Jackson was planning for his spring break. Whilst many other people were planning to go to Gulf Shores or across the state to places along the Emerald Coast, Jackson was making complex travel arrangements that took him to Paraguay in the last week of March and then Niger a few days later before returning to Florida for classes the next Monday. His twenty-second birthday came and went with nothing but a card from Robert that had a picture of Melissa holding the baby and a little note inside apologising for leaving without telling him. In a fit of anger, he ripped the entire thing to pieces and spent his evening at a sleazy bar down the street from campus.

In late March, Jackson boarded a plane bound for São Paolo and onto Asunción with Ian several rows behind and to the left of him. The plan he had in store for the assassination of Luis María Argaña didn't have nearly as much finesse as the Abacha project; everyone knew the job would be done and would work well for the area of the world in which the murder took place. Upon arrival in Paraguay, Jackson presented his Peruvian passport to the customs officers and had a short conversation with them about the current political affairs of Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori as he watched Ian go quickly to the oversized baggage claim. Just a couple of days earlier, Jackson had contacted the South American headquarters of the organisation to assure that Ian's firearms would make it easily from São Paolo to Asuncíon, and as soon as he saw Ian lug his weapons from the claim area, he bid farewell to the officer and headed out to the curb.

Ian boarded a bus to a car rental place, not making eye contact with Jackson as he went by. Jackson took a shuttle to a hotel close to the airport where he slept for the night, but the next morning awoke before the sun. He packed his toiletries and wiped down the entire bathroom. At dawn, he left the room hailed a cab into downtown Asuncíon where he sat at a café drinking coffee until Ian appeared an hour and a half later. They chatted for a short while about nothing in particular until Jackson's watch beeped, at which time they paid their tab and went to the car Ian had rented. They crossed the city with the radio tuned into a jazz station and sat with the car idling across the street from Argaña's house. Shortly before nine o'clock, Ian crawled into the back of the car and began putting together the gun he'd chosen after studying the site.

Jackson moved over to the driver's seat and watched Argaña's house intently. A large SUV was parked in the front, and from what he'd gathered in his first solo research project, Argaña used that vehicle every morning to drive off to work as the vice president of the Latin American nation. The back of the car popped open and Ian slipped off into the bushes, so Jackson drove away slowly, watching Argaña walked out with his retinue to the car. Once Jackson turned off of the street and began his way to the next block, he heard the sounds of Ian's AK-47, and within thirty seconds, Ian was calmly crossing through someone's yard to get in the car with Jackson. He removed his leather gloves and looked at the younger man.

'Clorinda then?'

With a nod, Jackson pressed the gas pedal and headed out of the city, concentrating only on getting over the Argentine border before the country's borders were closed. The smooth jazz continued, and within twenty minutes, Jackson had dropped Ian in Clorinda and was making his way very quickly in a stolen car to Formosa, where he had a flight to Paris scheduled for only two hours later. Something like this had the possibility of closing down the surrounding areas and he wanted to be certain he'd be able to leave the continent before things got too out of hand. Until he shed the persona of the Peruvian Julio Bendelek and became Christian Poulain, the artist son of the leader of the World Society, Jackson had a sick feeling in his stomach that he refused to let surface on his face. Comfortably cushioned in his aeroplane seat only thirty minutes after his arrival in Formosa, he watched the plane fill with chatting French tourists and stone-faced businessmen on their way back to Europe.

The person sitting next to him turned out to be a French high school student from a small city just outside of Geneva called Bonne. They talked about the Geneva area and griped about tourists until the ocean appeared under them and Jackson apologised that he was going to go ahead and sleep until they arrived in Paris. The boy put his headphones on and Jackson was asleep within a half hour.

---

In Paris, a World Society employee who identified herself as Poulain's personal secretary met Jackson at the terminal. She took him back to headquarters for a shower and a fresh change of clothes before taking dictation from him regarding the timings of the events in the Argaña assassination to be submitted to the customer. Once finished, she presented him with a file on a new project that was to take place in Massachusetts later that year and encouraged him to look at it as they drove back to Charles de Gaulle International.

'Another Kennedy?' Jackson asked as he thumbed through it.

'I don't read the files, Monsieur Rippner,' she admitted as she turned onto the road leading up to the airport. 'I just deliver them.'

He looked at the back of her head as they got up to the airport. After taking his bags to the curb, she smiled at him broadly.

'I'll be sure to send your gift to your father, Monsieur _Poulain_. It is a lovely painting,' she cooed. 'I'm sure he would have loved to have seen you in person, but he's always so busy with business, you know.'

'Of course,' Jackson smiled back at her. '_Merci beaucoup, mademoiselle. J'espère que vous avez un bon jour._'

'_Et avez-vous un bon vol, s'il vous plaît_.'

'_Merci_,' he said and she walked away to the other side of the car.

After slipping the new file into his briefcase, he picked up his bags and entered the airport. He checked in at the ticket counter as Christian Poulain before being pointed towards the departure terminal, a beautiful glass-roofed structure, by a ticket agent. He made it to the gate area quickly and sat at a coffee shop across from the gate to work on the new project whilst having breakfast. By the time his row was called for boarding, Jackson had a general mental sketch of what he'd be doing in Massachusetts later that year. Once he got on the plane, he quickly found his way back to his notes and worked on fleshing out his ideas.

Despite the odd glances of the person next to him (after all, how often was it that an obviously completely Caucasian man took all of his notes in Arabic?), he was able to plan out a rough idea of what to do and it involved such exciting things as forcing planes out of the sky and big explosions. Sure, it was standard to just assassinate people in the regular execution style, but Jackson enjoyed a little pizzazz. If anything, pizzazz kept him working alone and Lyna simmering back in Europe or at least bothering someone else. That was one positive thing—she could never complain to him about not being placed on jobs because she wasn't only contracted to the World Society like he was. The woman just enjoyed killing, so she made herself available for whatever or whoever came up.

'Are you from the Middle East?' asked the man sitting next to Jackson and he looked up with a start.

'No,' he answered shortly. 'Switzerland.'

'Oh. Do you translate for a job?'

For a second, Jackson thought the man was speaking in code, but then he realised that he was just prying. 'That's my business, not yours.'

The man gave him a vaguely complaining look before picking up his in-flight magazine and flipping through it hastily. As he went back to his work, Jackson made a mental note to begin requesting two seats on flights where he'd be working. People were just nosy enough to make him vaguely uncomfortable, and if he aroused enough suspicion through his actions, he was certain the flight attendants and other close passengers would start connecting the dots regarding the timing of his flights and certain high-profile deaths. Laying his arm over the documents on his tray table, Jackson went back to work and continued until the flight attendant reached over to tap his shoulder and tell him that he had to put his tray table up for landing.

They landed in Niamey very late that evening. He'd never been to Niger before and quite honestly could admit he'd never even considered coming back to the region after the Abacha assignment. He wandered around the airport lobby for a little while before seeing a man in a chauffeur's outfit holding a small sign for 'Poulain.' The man escorted him to a simple black car with heavily tinted windows, opening the door so that Jackson could slip in and sit next to the customer. They sat in silence as the chauffeur drove away from the airport, but as they merged into traffic, Jackson spoke, not looking at the man as he did so.

'_Bonjour,_ Monsieur Wanké. _Je m'appelle_ Jackson Rippner.'

'_Ouais, je sais_,' said the man gruffly in response. 'You have our plans?'

'Yes,' Jackson said, opening his briefcase and producing a file. 'With an impending coup d'état, Maïnassara will attempt to leave the country, and because of the geographic location of the country, he will most likely try to escape by air from the Niamey airport.'

'How can you be so sure?'

'I've already made arrangements with Geneva to offer him asylum.'

'Very good,' said Wanké as they drove along the streets of Niamey.

'Now, once he arrives in the airport, your men will surround him,' said Jackson, pulling out the plans for the Niamey airport. 'It will need to take place in this exact area or there's the chance that your men could be injured by the airport security officers.'

Wanké took the paper from him and looked at it, nodding. Jackson gave him the rest of the papers and the man read in silence until they arrived at a non-descript office building on the outskirts of the city at which point Jackson realised that despite having an entire meeting, the two never looked directly into each other's faces. Wanké, looking out at the building, very carefully rearranged the papers and put them into a silver, padlocked briefcase that had been by his feet. His assistant, who had been sitting in the passenger's seat, opened the customer's door and Wanké began getting out. Jackson made a move to get out when Wanké did, but the man stopped him.

'You're leaving the country now.'

Jackson looked at him oddly, but the man just slammed his door and the driver sped off before Jackson could do anything. 'Where are we going?'

'Ouagadougou,' the man replied. 'Mr Wanké doesn't want you in the country during the coup.'

'That's… very kind of him,' Jackson said with a bit of a questioning tone.

'Don't think of it that way,' the driver said gruffly. 'Mr Wanké has a very close relationship with your organisation and it was requested that you be taken out of the country before the coup to assure your safety. If something were to happen to you, Mr Poulain assured Mr Wanké that the consequences would be dire.'


	14. July and October 1999

A/N: Egads, so much school work! I've barely been able to do anything with Bejerot in the last few days because I've had projects and tests! Only one more test tomorrow and then no tests until... erm... Tuesday.

Dammit.

---

Fuelled by his self-motivation and the plain wish to get away from college for a bit, Jackson was able to arrange all of his extra summer and regular semester credits to graduate a year earlier than he was originally slated to and thus found that he had much more time to plan his largest assignment yet: the bloodless coup d'état that was to take place in October. As a bonus for his early graduation, the organisation hired an interior decorator to cater to Jackson's Spartan tastes in the design of his condo. Whenever Jackson would come home at the end of the day, there would be something new, but nothing beyond his very restrictive colour palate of white, mahogany and silver.

The first part of the summer was spent finishing his pilot's license down in Miami and then Jackson moved up to Martha's Vineyard. In late July, he and Ian orchestrated the downing of John F. Kennedy, Jr's plane into the Atlantic. Almost immediately after, Ian took a train from Boston to New York City to stay in an organisation-held apartment in Midtown and Jackson had the vacation home all to himself. For the first couple of weeks, he mostly stayed around the house planning the Pakistani coup d'état until the media coverage of the death of Kennedy became so constant that he was attacked with the heady feeling that he'd caused it and the reaction to death that Lyna had planted so firmly in him took over.

Thankfully, with it being summer vacation in a high-class place like Martha's Vineyard, there were plenty of parties for the wealthy college-aged man, so he simply watched around that Friday night and mixed in with a group heading down to the beach. He was able to create an alias from the top of his head and spent the evening pouring liquor down the throat of a New York City socialite who had ironically been in the Vineyard for the Kennedy wedding. They spent the entire evening at the beach until Jackson sleekly asked her if she'd like to come back to his place.

She threw an arm over his shoulder and they staggered back to the house. She was falling-down drunk and he practically sober, so whenever something random happened like a cat running across the street, she'd crack up laughing and he'd just chuckle uncomfortably. They got back to his house and he pulled out his keys, pushing them to the handle only to have the door swing lightly open. Tensing up, he pushed it open the rest of the way and nearly dropped the woman when the lights in the stairwell flipped on and a pregnant redhead stared at Jackson from under one of the lights.

'Who is that?' asked the woman, glaring at Jackson.

'I'm Jackson's sister,' Melissa replied coldly, not taking her eyes off of Jackson.

'You said you had the place to yourself,' said the woman, her face begging for an explanation. 'And who is _Jackson_?'

'I thought I did,' he said to her, squeezing her side, but the woman wasn't folding, especially because he ignored the last part of her question. Without a word, she shoved clumsily away from him and left loudly, slamming the door behind her.

'Sorry to interrupt your ass-grabbing.'

'What the fuck do you want, cock-blocker?' he asked, getting right up in her face. 'Your assignment is over, go home to your family.'

'Quit being a little bitch, Jacks,' she said, not giving in to his scare tactics. 'It's all just business, you know that.'

'I trusted you.'

'And I trust you,' replied Melissa. 'Things have more than one layer. You should know that by now.'

'All of you fucking women and your emotional shit.'

'Our emotional shit?' she said loudly. 'Jesus Christ, Jackson, you'd have to pay extra to take your emotional baggage on the plane.'

'Every single one of you is a fucking backstabbing bitch. I thought that you were different, but that's apparently not the case.'

'Oh, so now that you know I was sent specifically to be your friend, we suddenly can't be friends anymore?' she hissed. 'You're impossible! How did you not know it before hand, huh? Me being in all the same classes as you, going with you everywhere, doesn't that seem like an assistant more than a best friend? For the love of God, Sharena even _told_ you that Poulain sent me to Leelanau!'

Jackson gaped at her.

'Jacks,' she said, her voice suddenly soft as she reached out and put her hands on the sides of his face. 'Jacks, I still love you, okay? Two people who are forced together can still form a deeper bond than was seemingly meant for them.'

He was stoic for a moment before reaching up and putting his arms around her, awkwardly adjusting to her pregnant stomach. It wasn't a very meaningful hug, but it was still better than she'd expected. For a second, she thought he might be considering breaking her neck, but he let go and just stared at her with a sad little smile.

'Already pregnant aga—' he said, trailing off and scrutinising a place on her face where she'd rubbed against his hair.

The scrutinising grew more intense and he reached up to brush her cheek with one of his thumbs. She hissed a little as he pressed harder and then looked down at his makeup-covered finger. Before she could stop him, he'd pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and started rubbing the makeup from around her eye. His eyes narrowed as he looked at the bruised skin.

'Did someone do this to you?'

'We're finished here,' she said very quietly but with finality.

With tears teasing the edges of her eyes, she reached up to hold the sides of his face again before leaning in and kissing him lightly on his cheek. She slipped past him and out the front door. Even after her outline disappeared from the frosted glass in the front door, he stood, his hand on the banister, watching after her.

---

'You're not doing a very good job on your end.'

Robert was silent as he looked across the table at Matthius Poulain. The light from the man's desk reflected off of the highly shined wood and glared in Robert's eyes, but he didn't let Poulain know it was bothering him. The tall, black-haired woman to his left uncrossed and recrossed her legs to the other side as she gave him a cold look before looking past him at the stern-looking dark-haired man to Robert's right. Poulain leaned back in his desk chair and it creaked as he held a hand to his mouth and looked at Robert through thick glasses.

'Miss Melinyshyn has been keeping him busy and preoccupied,' Poulain said, tapping the fingers of his other hand on the armrest. 'Dr Greene has kept him well medicated and even held the boy long enough for you to change locations and manipulate stories. This is a very easy assignment, Robert.'

He sat up a little straighter. 'I didn't take into consideration her powers of manipulation.'

Poulain laughed. 'She's the daughter of two of our operatives. Did you not think she'd know a few tricks about escaping from kidnappers? She was taken hostage four times before the age of twelve and escaped every time.'

Robert gritted his teeth together. 'I thought that in her condition, she would not be able to pull her normal tricks.'

'You do not use the same technique twice on the same victim,' hissed Lyna, snapping her hand up in the air to emphasise her point. 'If you do that, they adapt. Do not get her pregnant again, break her kneecaps!'

Poulain put a hand up to silence her. 'What went wrong?'

'I took her with me on assignment in Boston because I thought it would be better to have her close to me rather than leaving her with someone else,' Robert replied. 'I locked her in the room, but I didn't take too many precautions because she'd never tried to escape before.'

'You should have assigned someone more seasoned to this project,' Lyna said harshly, leaning forward to glare at Poulain. He gave her a cold look in return and she immediately began moping, crossing her arms across her chest.

'She was gone when I came back a half-hour later. I asked at the front desk and they said she hadn't been through the lobby,' Robert said hastily. 'But when I called the New York City office to see what operatives were in the region, they said that Jackson was one of the ones within a hundred mile radius. They gave me his location and I drove down to Martha's Vineyard, but by the time I found her, she'd already spoken with him.'

'What did she tell him?' Greene asked, leaning forward.

'She says that all she did was forgive him for disappearing and that he has no idea of what's going on.'

'We can't risk this happening again,' Poulain replied with a dangerous tone. 'We've put a lot of time and money into the boy; he's a true asset of the organisation. If he falls in love with some girl, he'll have a weakness. He cannot have any palpable weakness that can be used against him.'

'What do we do, sir?' asked Robert in a slightly shaky voice.

'We all have our tasks. Lyna keeps him sexually occupied, Phil keeps him mentally occupied, I keep him fiscally sound,' said Poulain, pulling the chair up to his desk and fishing through a drawer. 'He's a very bright boy, you know. All the pieces are there, but they're not interacting correctly in his head, and that's what makes him indispensable. We could have absorbed any normal, bright child of his generation, but we chose him because he has difficulty differentiating between right and wrong, light and dark, and so on. He's the perfect alexithymic—very rare.'

Robert tensed as Poulain stopped looking through the drawer.

'People like you are a dime a dozen,' said the old man, giving him a very cold look. 'Jackson has a good amount of leeway with me because of his potential. No one will touch him, no one will hurt him. He's like a son to me, but you don't have that same position. You've given him a little twinkle of hope that just drags him down.'

Lifting his hand, Poulain levelled his handgun to the centre of Robert's forehead and immediately shot. The man slumped backwards as the old man calmly dropped the gun back into his desk and pressed a button to call his secretary. A moment later, two men dressed in black came in and took the body from between Lyna and Greene, but neither of them watched, both rather intently looking at Poulain.

'Greene, you will go back to Miami immediately. I want you to be ready for Jackson's next appointment. Encourage him to speak rather than leading him on,' said Poulain, and Greene stood and followed the men out. 'Lyna, my dear, I want you to go to Kazakhstan. Jackson is orchestrating the coup in Pakistan and should be in Kyrgyzstan within the next couple of days. Once you get news of the coup, call him. I want you to rid his mind of anything regarding Melissa Bayley.'

'But who will take case of Melissa, _monsieur_?'

'I'll be handling her personally.'

Lyna nodded and then followed the trail of blood to the door. With one last look back at Poulain, she left, closing the door behind her with a click.

---

'I've just seen the news,' purred Lyna's voice over the satellite connection. 'An impressive coup d'état.'

'Honestly, I didn't think you'd like it much,' Jackson said back, running his finger along the edge of his wine glass. 'Not a single person was killed.'

'It takes more planning to spill no blood.'

'Indeed it does, and it adds to the legitimacy of the new regime,' he said, then paused. 'You don't actually care about this, do you?'

'Not particularly, no.'

He let out a heavy sigh, secretly longing for someone who would just listen to him go on about the logistics of planning the coup, but deciding to settle for the more carnal desires. 'Where are you?'

There was a smile in her voice. 'Almaty, Kazakhstan.'

'Biskek, Kyrgyzstan.'

'Ysyk-Köl, two hours,' she said softly into the phone before hanging up.

After running his hand through his hair, Jackson took a long drag at his cigarette before dropping some paper Som onto the table and leaving the cafe.

---

It was dark in the doctor's office, just the way Jackson preferred. He was reclined on a chaise lounge on one side of the room directly across from the curtains feeling quite trite as Dr Greene looked at him in the dim light of the desk lamp. They'd been in there for almost two hours and nothing much but greetings had been exchanged between the two. Something told Jackson that Greene wasn't holding on to his professionalism because of the notes that already covered the first page of his notebook, but to be honest, he wasn't quite sure what the rules were governing the exchange of mental health information within the organisation itself. The occupation thrived on half-truths and deception, so the psychiatrists hired by the society most likely relied on first-hand accounts from partners and overseers to keep up with their patients—it was harder to hide something from people you dealt with daily than it was to hide something from a once-monthly therapist.

Jackson made a mental note at that point to stop talking to his secretary unless it was absolutely needed.

'Are you just going to waste our time, doctor?' Jackson finally asked, breaking the deafening silence.

'I want you to talk this time,' Greene replied. 'What do you want to talk about?'

'Are you married?'

Greene seemed slightly taken aback, but answered quickly. 'Recently divorced.'

'What was her name?'

'Not that it matters, but Lizzy.'

'Lizzy,' Jackson repeated, looking up at the ceiling. 'Civilian?'

'No, she works in the organisation,' Greene said. 'Why do you ask?'

Jackson crossed his ankles and put his hands on his abdomen. 'Every single woman that I've come across in this organisation has been the most deceitful, lying being to cross this earth.'

'Lizzy is no different. That deceit makes them very manipulative. It comes with the nature of our business.'

The twenty-three-year-old looked over at his doctor with a raised eyebrow. 'You're really not helping.'

Silence fell over the room once more and Jackson shifted to look at a painting on the wall rather than looking at Greene's face. Greene scratched down a few notes, though he wasn't sure what Jackson was getting at, and then looked back at his patient.

'Do you want to leave, Jackson?'

'Not really,' replied the younger man.

'If this continues to bother you, we may need to try different medications to help temper your emotions and help you focus on your work.'

'I focus on my work.'

'Yes, but you could focus better without the added burden of seeking a mate.'

Greene jumped a bit when Jackson laughed loudly, holding his stomach. 'Seeking a mate? What the hell is this, Phil?'

There was a sudden, fleeting feeling of discomfort as the first named informality entered their conversation. Dr Greene cleared his throat. 'It is a natural urge at this time of your life to seek out a means to continue your genes onto the next generation.'

'If it's any solace to you, I have no intention of ever participating in the creation of more Rippners,' Jackson replied, giving a half-serious look to the doctor. 'I think there are plenty already and would be more than glad to end the line right here.'

'All right,' Greene replied, seemingly admitting defeat. 'How have your medications been working out?'

'I'm not finished,' Jackson said, raising his eyebrows and looking over at the man. 'Why did you marry Lizzy?'

'Jackson, I fail to see how this applies to your case.'

'Humour me.'

Greene sighed loudly. 'We were recruited from the same medical school at the same time. We worked in the same general area and saw a lot of each other, so we just decided to get married. It was more a marriage of convenience than anything else.'

'Do you think that two people who are forced together by outside forces can come to have a deeper relationship than was meant for them?'

'You mean do I believe in fate,' Greene said, pointing at Jackson with the end of the pen in his hands.

'If I wanted to ask you about fate, I would have mentioned it specifically,' Jackson said with an edge of anger in his voice.

'There will never be anything more meaningful than carnal relations between you and Vasylyna Melinyshyn.'

'Good, because if I had to live with her, I'd probably have to kill her.'

'For the love of God, Jackson, what the hell are you wanting to ask me? You're just dancing around whatever the hell it is you're having a problem with. Just say what's bothering you and we can take care of it!'

There was a long period of silence during which Jackson didn't look at Greene, and then he stood up. 'I'm ready to leave now.'

The aggravated doctor watched as Jackson left the room, closing the door softly behind him. It wasn't until Jackson left that Dr Greene realised he'd given the exact reaction that the manipulative younger man was aiming for.


	15. Early June 2001

A/N: Hur hur hur my phone contract runs out today so I get a new cell phone. Maybe if y'all are good, I'll post my number somewhere so you can randomly pester me.

---

Jackson received his Masters in Management Science after eighteen months of assignment-less being. He was a favourite of the professors, who were impressed with his management abilities despite their supposition that he'd never been the manager of anything before. He liked to laugh at them behind their backs—he probably had managed more difficult things than any of them could even imagine. His finely tuned acting abilities were the only things that kept him going. Even if he wasn't paying attention at all during class, he could at least pretend to be.

The next big assignment was vaguely exciting for him. It came as a birthday present for the now twenty-four-year-old Jackson and the day it was to be carried out was the first of June, less than three months away. There would need to be ten dead by massacre, but the thing that was so special for him was the fact that it needed to be carried out by one of the ten rather than an assigned assassin. He'd become what he believe to be a master of manipulation whether it was talking some woman at a bar into coming home with him or convincing Mr Poulain that he didn't need Lyna's help on a certain assignment—he was more than excited to be able to use his skills on someone other than a bitchy Indian prostitute.

Shortly after his graduation ceremony from the University of Miami, Jackson was on a plane to Paris. After a covert conversation with a couple of other society operatives, he boarded a plane to Bahrain where he was met by three assistants, two women and a man, all whom he had never met before. Two days after he'd left Miami, he finally arrived in Nepal, and the group of them checked into the Regal Suite at the Soaltee Crowne Plaza Hotel in the capital city of Kathmandu.

That night, they all sat around the table in the huge living and dining area of the suite with their room service dinners cooling in the centre as they all presented the information for their respective areas of expertise. It was only then when Jackson learned the real names and occupations of his travel companions—prior to that point, Jackson was just Christian Poulain to them.

It turned out that his 'wife' for this assignment wasn't named Sylvie, but rather was a twenty-nine-year-old medical research assistant from Nice named Hélène.

'I've all of his medical files, and it's a relatively well-known fact that Dipendra is very hedonistic, participating in cocaine and alcohol usage to an extreme. I recommend we use this to our advantage, and on the night of the massacre, we can arrange for him to become very inebriated. The inebriation combined with the manipulation that…?'

'Jackson,' he responded when she looked blankly at him.

'Yes, that _Jackson_ does over the next few days, it should be easy to convince him to kill the people in his family.'

The other two people looked at each other. The man, a muscular, middle-aged Norwegian named Nils, glanced at Jackson questionably. 'And you're sure you can get this done in the time you have?'

'Positive,' Jackson replied, a bit cocky.

'All right, then Nils will be on the inside with the palace guard to assure that everything goes as planned,' Nils' wife Solveig said, shuffling papers around in front of her. 'Our customer's son will also be on the inside to pass off anything that needs to be delivered. I will be _taking care_ of the Crown Prince's girlfriend so that she will give us any aid that we need.'

Jackson nodded shortly before clearing the area in front of him and rolling out an architectural blueprint of the massive Narayan Hity Royal Palace. 'Dipendra's bedroom in over here, and the royal family typically gathers here in the billiard room. Paras, our contact on the inside, will be staying in the billiard room until Dipendra arrives for the eventual massacre. It will be Nils' job to warn Paras of his cousin's impending arrival; the customer has been very specific that if Paras is injured, the assignment will be considered an utter failure and there _will_ be consequences.'

'There is a good chance that Dipendra will be asking his valet for one of his hashish and cocaine cigarettes, so I will intercept the delivery of the cigarette and lace it with an anticholinergic… it will be delivered to Paras to then deliver to Dipendra.'

'Should we worry that the drug will be detected in the hospital?' asked Nils.

'If all goes to plan, there will be too much going on for anyone to worry about testing him,' said Solveig, leaning back and crossing her arms. 'If it doesn't go to plan, we'll be far gone anyway, and besides, he's been having these cigarettes made by an outside producer for years, so it's easy to pin it on them.'

'How are you meeting up with Dipendra, Jackson?' asked Hélène, looking over at him curiously.

'Paras is arranging a meeting between us.'

'Sounds good then,' Nils said, clapping his hands together. 'Well, it's been a long day of flights for all of us, so why don't we all go ahead and get some sleep. The next few days will be very busy, and it will be good to stay well rested.'

'Agreed,' replied Solveig, already moving to stand.

---

Out in the woods a couple of days later, Jackson stood camouflaged and armed to the teeth next to the Prince Dipendra. Originally, Dipendra was to go hunting with his cousin Paras, but at the last minute, Paras introduced his cousin to his 'friend' who had just flown in from France, Christian Poulain. Dipendra was a bit hesitant until Paras added that Christian was the only son of the leader of the famous World Society and had attended Eton a few years after Dipendra himself. Jackson and Dipendra chatted about Eton professors and secret societies for a half-hour before Paras excused himself and the two got into a Jeep and headed up into the mountains outside of the capital city.

After almost an hour of driving, the two arrived in a very rural area that was several thousand feet above sea level. Dipendra parked the Jeep near some brush and went around to the back to get out their bulletproof vests. He threw one at Jackson and the younger man slipped it on, velcroing the front as the Crown Prince looked through his selection of guns. Shoving his hands in his camouflage pants pockets, he came around to look into the boot, admiring the sheer amount of firepower the prince had at his disposal despite the fact that Nepal happened to be one of the most peaceful countries on earth.

'Impressive,' said Jackson, nodding his head towards the guns.

The Crown Prince smiled. 'I'm a collector.'

'That's an interesting thing to collect.'

Dipendra shrugged, shoving a cartridge into one of the rifles and handing it to Jackson (Jackson had failed to mention that he couldn't even shoot himself in the chest from an arm's distance and very honestly hoped that there would be no need to actually shoot any animal—he'd let Dipendra shoot it and then maybe participate in the field dressing or... something). After the Crown Prince chose his weapons, he closed the boot and they walked off towards some thick brush where they crouched down and looked out onto the expanse in front of them.

'Paras told me you were married recently,' said Dipendra, looking at Jackson in his peripheral vision.

'Yes, to my Sylvie. Her parents were very much against it, but they don't have too much to say about it now,' Jackson replied, adjusting his hold on the gun in his hands.

'They changed their minds about you?' asked Dipendra, turning to look at his hunting partner.

'Not really,' Jackson said, tipping his head a bit. 'Sylvie is in pharmacology.'

There was an unspoken understanding between the two.

'I hear you also have problems with your parents and your girlfriend,' Jackson prodded.

'You're worldly, being the son of the leader of the World Society. I'm sure you know the reasons behind the succession problems here in Nepal specifically in regards to my family and Devyani's.'

'Indeed,' said Jackson softly, looking out at the field before them. 'It's a Nepalese Romeo and Juliet, really.'

Dipendra nodded and silence followed.

'So, is that the normal gun you use for hunting?'

Dipendra looked down at the gun before bouncing it in his hands a little as he laughed. 'No, this is just for fun. I don't think many people would use an assault rifle for hunting, do you?'

'I suppose not,' Jackson replied. 'Tell me, Dipendra--you're the Crown Prince, the next in line for the throne... your father has already had two heart attacks. Don't you think it may be an idea to just push him over the edge and take the throne?'

At first, Dipendra gave him a dangerous look, but it softened quickly. 'It's something I've considered. As the king, I could marry whomever I wanted.'

Oh, this was going to make Jackson's job a lot easier; he nearly smiled. They were silent once more, and then with a swift movement, Dipendra shot a single round out of his rifle, and across the field, a bear fell to the ground.

---

Jackson spent the most of the next two days in Dipendra's company, whether they were drinking at Kathmandu bars, hunting in the mountains or flying a helicopter around the region. It was easy for Jackson to suck up to him because he admittedly had the same interests as the Crown Prince (with the exception of the hunting, of course). Luckily, Jackson had only shot once, and as he did so, made sure to trip over a rock so he had something to blame his terrible aim on. On Thursday afternoon, they played squash before Jackson invited the Prince to dinner with himself and his 'wife.'

At 18:30 on the dot, Hélène entered the restaurant Jackson had chosen and gave her name to the maître d'hôtel, who led her to a private room at the other end of the restaurant. Before entering, she straightened her dress and checked her makeup in her powder compact, and after assuring that she looked the part of the wife of the suave Christian Poulain, she made her way to the table where the two men sat. She smiled broadly as Jackson stood and pulled the chair out for her, kissing her on the cheek before she sat and he pushed in her chair. Brushing a few strands of platinum blonde hair out of her face, she nodded lightly to the Prince.

'Your Highness, it is a pleasure to meet you. Christian has spoken so highly of his new friend.'

Stretching her hand over to him, she waited for him to kiss the top of her knuckles before continuing.

'Christian tells me that you are interested in my skills,' she cooed.

Jackson leaned on his elbows and looked between the blonde Frenchwoman and the Prince. 'The Prince is interested in what you think would be the best to take care of his father peacefully. Something that isn't traceable.'

'By when?'

'Tomorrow evening,' replied Dipendra, picking up a bell and ringing it. A waiter came in and took his empty glass before he continued. 'I need it to happen when I can put it in my father's dinner.'

'That's very close,' said Hélène, looking at Jackson with a raised eyebrow. 'How much?'

'This is a favour for a friend,' replied Jackson with a smile, reaching out to put his hand tenderly on Hélène's arm. 'Surely you can come up with something on such short notice, ma chère.'

Hélène reached up to lace her fingers through his, giving him a smouldering look. 'I'm sure I can.'

'When can you get it to me?' asked Dipendra, watching the waiter set down another glass of scotch in front of him.

'We leave early tomorrow morning to go back to Paris,' Jackson replied. 'But Paras is seeing us off. Sylvie can pass it off to him then.'

'And he'll have it for me at dinner?'

'Yes,' said Hélène confidently. 'We'll wrap it like a present and give it to him to give to you.'

'Wonderful,' the Crown Prince said before sipping the scotch.

---

As darkness fell over Kathmandu the next evening, Nils Jensson walked along the Kanti Path-bordering wall of the Narayan Hity Royal Palace. On the other side of the wall, he could hear chatting voices and before long, there was a rhythmic tapping on the concrete. Quickly but as quietly as possible, he threw a hook up to the top of the wall and climbed it, dropping into the gardens on the inside and pulling the rope with him. After meeting eyes with the Nepalese prince Paras for a brief instant, he threw the rope behind a bush and ran towards the main palace, glancing at his watch as he neared the building. The changing of the guard was soon and he had to make sure to time everything perfectly so that he could get a guard uniform from one of the guards who was going off the clock.

He got inside, slipping into a niche along the hallway and listening to the voices coming his direction. There were three, one woman and two men, and as they passed, he hid himself in the darkness more. One of the men seemed comparable to his size, so he waited to watch which direction they were going before running after them quietly. In his ear, there was the soft, familiar sound of Solveig's voice over the comlink asking if he'd got the uniform yet because the Crown Prince was arriving at the palace with the Queen Mother. Solveig took the silence to understand he hadn't yet got the uniform, so she stopped talking just as he got to the door the group of guards had come through. There were sounds on the other side and he ducked into the shadows as the door opened and the newly uniformed guards came marching out. Reaching out, Nils grabbed the one closest to him and pulled him back with a cloth over his mouth. The other guards kept going on as Nils swiftly snapped the man's neck and took him to the next hallway, quickly changing into the uniform and marching after the other guards with his assault rifle held across his chest.

By the time the guards reached the billiard room, the family was all gathered around and chatting animatedly. In the corner, Paras was very slowly drinking a martini and he looked at Nils again, raising his glass to the brawny man. The clock in the room clicked over to eight o'clock and Nils straightened, knowing that the plan was really about to go into affect as the Crown Prince walked by him followed by the Queen Mother. The Queen Mother was escorted to the _Sano Baithak_ next to the billiard room by one of the princesses, and the Crown Prince immediately went to the bar where he was given another peg of Famous Grouse whiskey. By this point, he was already swaying on his feet and other members of the family had begun to notice his odd behaviour.

He drank the whiskey as he pulled out his mobile phone and dialled. 'Gajendra.'

'Yes sir,' said the Prince's assistant, looking worriedly at the gun Hélène held to his head as he spoke.

'Get one of my cigarettes to Ram,' said Dipendra as he emptied the glass and slammed it down on the bar loudly, his voice slurring more. 'Paras'll be by the east door of the billiard hall.'

'Right away sir,' Gajendra replied, closing his phone and looking at the Frenchwoman standing next to him. 'Wh-what are you doing?'

'What our employer has requested,' she said, handing off the gun to Jackson as she took the cigarette from Gajendra's hand, carefully opening it and dispensing a black, tarry substance into the centre of the hashish and cocaine mix that made up the cigarette. 'You will speak nothing of this or revenge will be carried to your _entire_ family.'

Jackson's eyes flittered between Gajendra and what Hélène was doing. She was working slowly, acting as if she were back in her research laboratory with hazardous chemicals—after biting at her tongue a bit, she put it back together and handed it back to Gajendra.

'Take this where it is to go,' she said to him. 'Now.'

The man shook his head nervously before walking away very professionally, leaving Hélène and Jackson behind in the back room. Without speaking, the two split; they went different directions to wait in different areas, her in the garden and Jackson within the palace.

Gajendra did exactly as he was told and gave the cigarette to an orderly who didn't seem to notice anything was amiss. As the orderly disappeared down the hallway, Gajendra laid back against the wall before his cell phone rang; he looked down and saw that the Crown Prince's girlfriend was calling him. He answered the phone as the orderly passed off the cigarette to Paras, who took it primly and delivered it to his cousin, even lighting it for the older man.

Only a couple of minutes passed before the Crown Prince's head fell to the bar and he pulled himself off of the bar stool, unable to stand once he did so. The cigarette lay half-smoked and smouldering on the countertop as the other princes rushed to him and immediately helped him to his bedroom away from the billiard room. They dropped the staggering prince in the room and Paras assured the Crown Prince's brother that he could handle the situation. Once he left, Paras glared at Dipendra as he lay back against the footboard of his bed.

'What's wrong with you?' hissed Paras.

'Didn't they give you something? Didn't they give you something to give to me?'

'What are you talking about?'

'The French,' Dipendra said, trying to pull himself to his feet. 'They were to give you something this morning to give to me tonight.'

'I haven't a clue what you're talking about,' said Paras, turning his back to his cousin and walking to the door. It opened and the Prince's assistant walked in. 'Gajendra, he is unwell.'

With a flourish, Paras left, and the three men who now stood at the door looked over at the Crown Prince, who was writhing on the ground, trying to take his shirt off. Gajendra walked to him and pulled the shirt off before all three helped him to his feet just in time to have him rip away from them and run to the bathroom. The men stood around uncomfortably as the Prince threw up loudly before coming to the doorframe, leaning against it heavily and breathing deeply.

'I'll be fine,' he said weakly. 'The three of you, go off to your chambers.'

He watched them with heavily lidded eyes as they left the room, making quick eye contact with a Caucasian guard standing outside his door. The door clicked shut and he staggered to the end of the bed, looking at the fatigues that he couldn't remember placing on the top of his bureau. As he made his way over to the clothing, he swore he could hear whispers in his head.

_'Just because you didn't get the chemical doesn't mean you can't become king. There are other ways. But there are others who will want the throne: your mother... your brother... your uncles...'_

Dipendra took a few hesitant steps closer, the edges of his toes poking under the bureau. He laid his hands atop the clothing.

_'All you need is in here. Change into the clothes and choose your favourite guns...'_

There was a momentary pause and then the Prince picked up the clothing on top of the bureau and began dressing in it. After a few minutes, the Prince was straightening the collar of the camouflage clothing, swaying on his feet a little as he did so. Bending down to his discarded clothing, he fished out his mobile and pressed a button, pressing it to his ear.

'Devyani,' he slurred into the phone. 'No, I'm all right. Yes, I'm about to go to sleep. Goodnight, we'll talk tomorrow.'

He listened for a moment more before dropping the phone onto the floor and walking to a display case of guns—Paras had checked that every single one of them was loaded earlier. In the end, Devyani grabbed up the gun he'd used the first time he went hunting with Jackson, another rifle, a shotgun, and two pistols. With the shotgun and one rifle strapped across his back and the two pistols in the pockets of his pants, the Prince cocked the rifle in his hands and walked to the door, swinging it open loudly. Before it closed, Jackson could hear a meek voice on the other side.

'Shall we bring the emergency bag, sir?'

'It's not necessary now,' was Dipendra's reply before the door closed.

With the killer set on the prowl, Jackson took a cathartic breath and then slipped from his hiding place within the hollowed-out bureau, moving quickly to the window under which Hélène was waiting. He opened it and crawled out, closing the window behind him before settling near her in the bushes.

In the hallway, Nils saw the Crown Prince coming and moved as calmly as possible in to the billiard room, making his way to Prince Paras. 'Sire, we have an urgent message from your father.'

Paras stopped his conversation with his cousins and nodded to Nils. 'Thank you. Excuse me.'

Paras and Nils walked out of the room and to the gardens around the Tribhuvan Sadan as Dipentra reached the entrance of the billiard room. Before the two men could even close the doors behind them, there were the sounds of automatic sub-machine gunfire and screaming. Nils ducked into the bushes along the border wall as havoc broke loose and the more heavily armed guards from the outer lines of the palace fell in to aid the royal family. Paras ran to the far end of the gardens as the Princess Shova ran out, screaming as her nephew Nirajan fell from the shots his brother was now firing upon the gardens.

There was an explosion of glass as the royal guard demolished the doors leading from the billiard room and began carrying out the bodies of the injured and dead royalty to be transported to the closest military hospital. Members of the guard seemed unaware that the Crown Prince was still running free on the grounds and were more caught up in the rescue effort than anything. As Nils looked across the grounds, he could see Hélène and Jackson sneaking away, using the chaos as a cover. Dropping his gun in the bushes, Nils watched to make sure the rescuers were preoccupied before running after his team members, glancing at Paras' smiling face as he ran by. The prince waved at him with a pistol in his hands as the assassins made it to the wall. All three of the people on the inside were out and slinking along the Kanti Path that ran along the side of the palace from which they'd escaped.

Other than the sirens and shouts of the rescuers, it was silent, but by the time the group had made it to where Solveig parked their car several hours earlier, there were a few shots and they all knew that Paras had done his biggest part by killing his cousin. They got into the car, Nils in the driver's seat, as ambulances dispatched from the two hospitals a couple of blocks from the palace streamed by on their way to the hospital.

With absolutely no modesty, Jackson and Hélène stripped down to their underwear and put their blood-splattered clothes in paper bags. Garment bags hung from the hook on one side of the car and Hélène unzipped them, extracting a suit for Jackson and a dress for herself. They changed in silence as Nils watched the road, and once they finished, Nils pulled away from the parking structure and drove them to a hotel on the opposite end of town. The two alighted and watched as Nils drove away towards where Solveig was keeping Devyani; the plan was to take her over the Indian border and then drive themselves to an airport in the country to fly back to Europe. With a quick look at Jackson, Hélène pressed a passport into his hand and they walked into the hotel as Colin and Deirdre Reilly, an Irish couple sight-seeing in Nepal on their honeymoon.

By the time they'd checked in, the city of Kathmandu was already in turmoil, but the two members of the World Society had absolutely no intention of leaving until the entire plan was seen through.

---

Everywhere Gajendra Bohara looked, he could see the two people who held him at gunpoint and forced him to give the tainted cigarette to the Crown Prince. Here the blonde was at the market, standing behind him in queue when he was waiting to pay. There the blue-eyed man was sitting next to him when he stopped in the morning for coffee at a café near his house. As he sat in his office, he could look out and see them arguing over a map nearby. He swore he could see them stalking around his house at night, and all this was enough to leave all mention of them out of his testimony. Whenever he'd mention people around the house, his wife would brush it off as the media, and after awhile, he just stopped mentioning it even to her—by the time the new king was established, he stopped seeing the woman.

The man, however, hung around, but what worried Bohara about him was the fact that he could look and see him and the next moment he'd be gone. There was something terrifying about the young man even though he was probably half of Bohara's size and age—he was such a slip of a thing, Bohara could probably break him, but the look that was always on his face burned in the back of the Nepalese man's mind. He only ever saw him from a distance, and from that distance, his eyes looked soulless because of their pale colour. There was no doubt in his mind that he wouldn't hesitate to kill him and his family, and that kept him on edge.

Jackson, on the other hand, was quite enjoying this act. It wasn't something that he'd done before with any of his victims—usually he was in and out, just trying to avoid the prying eyes of the authorities. This job was making him ballsy though; it wasn't often that the person who hired assassins was the new ruler of the country. He found himself following the former Crown Prince's assistant everywhere, finally getting a huge thrill out of his job. Sure, the cerebral part of management was wonderful, but working to avoid having Bohara see him twice was so much more exhilarating. He liked hiding and seeing the effect he had on the other man. It was so invigorating that Jackson would leave his hotel before sunrise claiming to be going hiking in the mountains and when he returned late that night, the hotel workers honestly thought he'd been working strenuously all day.

One night at the beginning of Jackson's third week in Kathmandu, he walked in as normal and smiled at the desk attendant but this time the man beckoned him over.

'Mr Reilly, you have a guest. She came a few hours ago and we sent her up to your room.'

'My wife?' questioned Jackson.

'No, she said she's your sister.'

'Oh, of course. I wasn't expecting her so soon.'

The man smiled and nodded. 'How were the mountains today, Mr Reilly?'

'Very beautiful,' he said shortly before walking over to the open elevator.

Once the doors closed, he immediately began undressing. His suit coat was draped over the rail, his shirt quickly unbuttoned and untucked, and his belt undone before the doors opened on his floor. Grabbing the jacket, he hastily went to the door of his room and keyed in, shoving it open and dropping his jacket, shirt, and pants before the door even closed behind him.

'Lyna?' he asked, out of breath as he traipsed forward into the open living room.

'Oh... I didn't consider that.'

Jackson glanced over to the bed; lying right in the centre was Melissa wearing those God-awful flannel pyjamas she so adored. She looked at him standing there in his underwear and undershirt with a raised eyebrow before shrugging, pressing the power button on the television and leaving them draped in darkness. There was a little bit of thumping as Jackson felt around for a lamp, and when he found one, she found that he was standing right over her.

'Melissa, what are you doing here?'

'My friend Hélène told me that she'd worked with you the past couple of weeks and then told me where you were staying,' she said, putting her arms behind her head. 'I was in Hong Kong, so it wasn't too far to get here.'

'But why are you here?'

'It's been two years,' she murmured. 'Haven't you been curious about where I've been, what I've been doing? It's easy to tell where you've been because you leave a pretty wide path of destruction.'

'I figured you'd be living at home, being a housewife, taking care of your children,' he said dryly. 'That's not exactly something I care to take up my time asking about.'

'You seemed shocked enough to see where he punched me,' she muttered.

'He did that?' Jackson asked, angered. 'Where is he right now? Still in Hong Kong?'

'Oh Heavens no,' Melissa laughed. 'Poulain killed him right before the Pakistan coup d'état for allowing you to see me.'

'Allowing...?' he asked with wide eyes. 'What do you mean by that?'

'Poulain is preening you to be the next head. A person who is the head of an organisation like his cannot have any liabilities. Everything has to be business because business deals are easy to rearrange or bounce back from. It's when things get personal that people stop being level-headed and get into trouble.'

'What does that have to do with you?'

'Poulain thought that we were getting too close and that there was the possibility that we may have become romantically involved.'

Jackson laughed. 'Are you serious?'

'Completely,' she said with a loud, aggravated sigh. 'After Robert died, they abducted my daughter and me and held us for that entire year that you didn't have an assignment. At the end of the year, they took my resignation and sent the three of us to live in Hong Kong because it's one of the areas that the organisation doesn't have jurisdiction over.'

'You've been living in Hong Kong for the past year and didn't even call me?'

'They're keeping tabs on you. They know whoever you call and who calls you.'

Jackson thought about the cell phone in his suit pocket. 'Well, I never call anyone that I shouldn't, so I suppose this isn't an issue.'

'You're the picture-perfect manager, my dear.'

Without a word, Jackson turned off the light and got into bed with her, urging her under the sheets so he could hold her and smell her perfume.

'Nice to know I'm a security blanket.'

'I can't believe they thought we'd become romantically involved,' Jackson said under his breath. 'You're basically my sister not to mention I'm pretty sure you're a lesbian.'

She laughed. 'No, I just hate men. Fuck you all.'

'You used to steal my pornography, Peach. That's a bit of a tip-off,' he said with a snort.

Even though he couldn't see her face, he knew that she was scandalised. 'Did not!'

'I was awake.'

'Jackson, you don't even have pornography,' she said simply.

He pressed his nose to the nape of her neck. 'Of course I don't.'

She grumbled and rolled her eyes before becoming serious. 'Keep working hard, Jacks. Just know that the kids and I are okay, and we're moving back to America in a few months.'

'To be honest, I really haven't thought about it too much. You can take care of yourself, you don't need me to protect you.'

'More like I can kick your ass,' she said, pinching him hard on the arm. 'Mum pulled some strings and I'll be working in the Federal Bureau of Investigation doing the same damn thing I did for the organisation.'

'Where are you living?' he asked as he pressed his nose just behind her ear. His breath was warm against her shoulder.

'New York City,' she replied softly. 'I don't want you to come anywhere near there, okay?'

'I understand,' he said, pulling her closer, running his fingers along her waist softly.

To anyone else, it would have seemed like they were a loving couple musing over memories, but Melissa knew better. She didn't have a name to describe him until a psychology class she took in college, but the perfect disorder for him was alexithymia. He'd grown increasingly logical over the years to the point where he was almost devoid of emotions except for the occasional uncharacteristic outburst. He never spoke of dreams and didn't fantasise about the future (or anything, for that matter). For him, the future was extremely concrete—he'd be doing what he was doing now until he died or was killed in the line of duty. There was no need to worry about the normal course of action for human beings: college, work, love, family. For Jackson, it quit after the second step. She knew that he had deeper feelings for her, but he could never put it into words. Cuddling against her was like saying 'I appreciate you coming to visit me, Peach. It really means a lot to me.'

In the back of her mind, she wished there would be someone who could understand his cold nature and learn to deal with it. Everyone always seemed to want some man who would profess his undying love for her every day, but it took someone specific who could learn to put up with Jackson's shit. She'd grown with it and tried to smack it out of him, finally accepting that he was going to be a general jackass in the end, but someone coming across him in five or ten years wasn't going to be as accepting as she'd become. Putting her arms around Jackson, she held him closer and kissed the top of his head.

'I'm leaving Kathmandu tomorrow,' he said, yawning a bit. 'Poulain called in all of the main members of the society from their assignments.'

'That's weird,' she said, rolling her eyes up in thought. 'Why would he do that?'

'I didn't get many details,' he replied. 'It doesn't really matter all that much to me.'

With that, he nuzzled his nose to her shoulder and drifted off to sleep, but Melissa kept looking at the ceiling, worry written all over her face. When she woke up early the next morning, Jackson was already gone.


	16. July 2001

_A/N: _I got my new phone and it's cuuutteee! It's all pink and precious and is called a KATANA. Supar bored and want to call/text me? My number is 400-2379 in area code 615. Now on to the story!

_---_

_'Tout le monde, bon matin_,' said Matthias Poulain, stepping up to the podium in front of the room of people in his Geneva estate. 'I'm sure you're all curious as to why you've been brought here today for this meeting.'

Typically, in a group of people, there would be murmuring at this question, but a room full of assassin managers and regional supervisors tended to be relatively quiet. They all stared at him, waiting patiently for the answer.

'As you know, we have recently enacted a new rule within the society that disallows indiscriminate massacres to be managed or planned by our operatives. Some of the branches of the society have been affected negatively by this new rule, and I would like to formally apologise for this. However, I would like for all of you to know why the board and I have decided to make this change.'

Jackson looked around carefully at the other people in the room. Some he recognised from working with them—Lyna, Ian, the head of the New York American head office, the leader of the African head office in Cape Town, and a few others such as Melissa's mother—but most were foreign to him. He was told by Lyna upon arrival that every regional leader—one each from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, South Africa, North America, South America, and Australia—had come with the heads of each important field office within important regions of activity. She'd assured him that this was something new; never in her twenty years or Ian's thirty in the organisation had either of them heard of a meeting like this.

'It has come to our attention that the terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda has been planning a huge-scale attack on the United States. You all know that in the past, we have worked with terrorist organisations to support their stances on the position of the world and to uphold our motto,_ fiat justitia et pereat mundus_. However, I made the decision about this embargo because of the sheer scale of the attacks planned by these terrorists.'

Jackson piqued an eyebrow, looking at that man at the podium warily. Beside him, he could see Lyna do the same thing.

'Our aim in this society is to quickly please the customer without too much ado. In, out, done. In times of war, we gladly arrange massacres of government enemies. Our own Jackson Rippner planned the ones in Algeria just a few years ago that killed thousands of civilians,' Poulain said with some pride and Jackson could feel his face grow red, but he wasn't sure if it was from anger or embarrassment. 'But _tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis_: times are changing, and we change in them.

'It is my personal opinion that masses of people should not be killed without warning of the impending death. In times of war, it is expected that there will be civilian casualties, so we have agreed to give our services to the dominant parties in volatile countries. This attack that we have been informed of by the Middle East office, however, is on mass unarmed civilians. I'd now like to invite Ghodsi Pedram, head of the Middle East office, to the podium.'

A number of people looked at the area where the Middle East office delegates were sitting and watched as the stately woman who headed the office walked up to the podium.

'Thank you, Monsieur Poulain,' the woman said to him with a smile before turning her attention to the front. 'Everyone, it is my great displeasure to inform you that the terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda, whom we have done business with before, has been planning an attack on New York City in America. They are working out of Miami and plan to use flights out of Boston, New York City, and the District of Columbia for their attack on the Financial District's World Trade Centre. Because of this information, we have decided to move the head offices of the organisation in America to Los Angeles, on the opposite coast.'

The regional director of New England and the Eastern Seaboard based in New York stood. 'If this is going to affect the region so badly that we're being forced out of the city, why aren't we warning the American government?'

Pedram stepped to the side and Poulain came back up to the microphone. 'It has been our rule since the beginning to avoid involving the authorities of any given area as it compromises our interests.'

'Yes, but in all respect, sir, this is a pretty big thing to keep from the Americans.'

'The board and I have already come to our decision on this situation. Our people and their families will be relocated, and if there is any hint that anyone within the organisation leaks information to anyone within the national or local governments, he or she will be dealt with most severely.'

Under Poulain's glare, the man from the regional office sat back down.

'Are there any other questions or concerns?'

Jackson stood. 'Where are operatives working in the area supposed to report?'

'We will be halting all operations in North America until further notice.'

Finally the room broke into buzzing conversation. Jackson sat back down and looked at his assassins, who sat on either side of him. Lyna was uninterested, having been on the blacklist of entering the United States by Poulain himself after a near capture by the authorities back in her early days in the society, but Ian was gritting his teeth. He lived between Miami and Rio de Janeiro, but the brunt of his American assignments were increasingly in the United States as South American guerrillas took over what would have formerly been his job. This was going to affect all of them, but it would hurt the people confined to the Americas the worst.

'Do we have any idea when this attack will take place?' asked a meek-looking woman from the Canadian Québec regional office.

Pedram stepped back up to the microphone. 'We haven't yet found out a specific date, but we know that they are aiming for some time in the first half of September. We believe that it will be some time during the span of 3 to 18 September because those dates cover the span of the negotiations for the Camp David Accords.'

'Does this have anything to do with Saddam Hussein?' asked the New York regional director.

'We haven't yet determined that,' admitted Pedram.

'One hundred dollars says 11 September,' whispered Jackson, leaning over to Lyna.

'Why 11 September?' she asked with a raised eyebrow.

'That's the day that the current President's father threatened use of force against Iraq back in 1990 after Hussein invaded Iran,' Jackson replied. 'So, basically, the beginnings of the Gulf War. Last time I checked, people are still sore over that one on both sides of the Atlantic.'

'I think it will be 18 September,' she said back with a smirk. 'That is the day that the Peace Accord was signed, so that is the day everyone in the Middle East remembers.'

'I'll take 5 September,' said Ian from the other side. 'The day the peace process actually started at Camp David.'

Jackson sighed loudly and leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head. 'I'm gonna enjoy those two hundred dollars when I come to claim them on 12 September.'

'One day, you will fail,' grumbled Lyna, crossing her arms and leaning back in her chair, looking to her other side.

'Oh-ho,' he said, looking at her with a grin. 'Jealous because I'm not barred from entering the most powerful country on Earth? Would you like me to send you some blue jeans and soft toilet paper when I get back home?'

'I will tell you where to put your country,' she growled, shoving her fist up under his chin.

'Children, children,' sighed Ian. 'Poulain is speaking again.'

'I will personally be keeping in touch with the eight Continental Delegates regarding the resumption of assignments in North America. If there are no more questions, then you are all free to go except for the members of the New York offices, of course,' he said, and people started to get up. 'Also, if Jackson Rippner could please stay.'

Jackson watched as everyone except him and the two New Yorkers left the ballroom. Lyna dragged behind everyone else, staring between Jackson and Poulain. Once the last person, Lyna, left, Poulain's butler closed the doors to the room with a loud snap that echoed from the tile floors to the dome ceiling. He stared at the doors until Poulain called for his attention.

'Jackson,' the old man said, walking down from the stage. 'There's an emergency and we have two months to evacuate our employees from New York City without raising too many eyebrows. What do you do?'

Jackson tipped his head a bit, puckering his lips in thought. 'How many employees need to be evacuated?'

Poulain looked at the head of the New York regional office and the man cleared his throat. 'Operatives and their families, we have twenty-one. But if you count general workers of the offices, what would you say?'

The Americas office leader lifted her hand from her Daytimer and chewed on the end of her pen, rolling her eyes to look at the ceiling. 'Altogether, fifty-three in the regional and continental offices.'

'Are they concentrated or spread throughout the New York City area?'

The American Continental Delegate flipped a few pages in her Daytimer to a map of the New York City area. She clicked her tongue a bit as she bent down to look at it closer. From Jackson's seat, he could see that there were little dots all over the map and a huge group of them melded into a splotch of dots over Manhattan. A few were in Queens and Brooklyn, but most were on the east side of Manhattan focused in Murray Hill just south of the United Nations building.

'They're... pretty concentrated.'

'Poor planning,' said Jackson with a sneer.

'We didn't expect to have to evacuate at any time,' spat back the Delegate.

'Enough,' said Poulain. 'Jackson, my boy, what would you recommend?'

'Does every employee at the office know what the real aim of the organisation is?'

'No, there are some who consider it a real office and think—'

'Then those people will be left in the city. How many does that leave us?'

The Delegate pressed her lips together. 'Twenty-eight.'

'And those twenty-eight must be the ones in Murray Hill. Normal office workers wouldn't be living there,' said Jackson flippantly. 'Unfortunately, you put them in the same neighbourhood, but not the same building, so we can't say... infect a building with mould to give them an excuse to move out. No, that would be far too easy.'

The woman narrowed her eyes at Jackson but said nothing.

'What a predicament,' he said, enunciating every word. 'Well, to start, close the office immediately. Hm… demographics?'

'Seven single, four couples, three families of three, one family of four,' said the regional director.

'All American?'

'No,' replied the Director. 'Four of the singles are foreign nationals, two couples have a foreign national, and one of the families of three has a foreign father.'

'What countries?'

The man thought for a second. 'Russia, Norway, Turkey, Spain and Belgium.'

'Send them to the closest field offices to their home countries,' said Jackson quickly. 'We'll cover it as a reorganisation of the society. The closing of the office there needs to be very public so that the neighbours of our members know it very well. How many does that leave?'

'Three single, two couples, two families of three, and the family of four.'

'Young children?'

'Both families of three have children under the age of two,' said the Delegate. 'One is my family.'

'And the family of four is mine,' said the Director.

'Well, the Director and Delegate won't be hard to move, very good. You'll be sent directly to Los Angeles, I'm sure,' said Jackson, looking to Poulain for affirmation. Once he gave it, he continued. 'So three single, two couples, one family of three. Send the family of three to...' he paused for a moment. 'The Chicago office.'

The Delegate flipped to another page in her Daytimer and started taking furious notes in the note section. Once she finished, she looked up to Jackson. 'And...?'

'The remainder need to be actively looking for jobs outside of the organisation just like their civilian counterparts will be, but because they live in Murray Hill, there will be more of a press to get out of the city and into cheaper housing. Their emigration needs to be staggered over the remaining month-and-a-half. The last should leave no later than the eighth of September.'

'But Delegate Pedram said that the range of attack is 3 to 18 September,' said the Delegate.

'I have money on the 11th,' said Jackson, suddenly more cocky that usual. 'I'm quite confident that it will happen then.'

Poulain smiled as Jackson leaned back in his chair and smirked at the two New Yorkers.

The Delegate snapped her head to look at Poulain. 'Did he plan this attack?'

'No,' said Poulain harshly. 'He's just very good at his job.'

Slowly, she took a couple more notes and closed her Daytimer, slipping the pen back into her suit pocket. 'Then we're finished here?'

'Indeed we are,' said Jackson, not even bothering to check with Poulain this time. 'Sir, if I may have a moment...'


	17. 11 September 2001

A/N: Thus enter Lisa.

---

Jackson was back in Miami in time for Bastille Day, not that it really mattered to him. What nagged him was the fact that he was going to be stuck in Miami until Poulain allowed the American operatives out of the country again—after all, what was better than all the jet-setting he'd grown accustomed to since he started work with them six years earlier? Despite having a Miami address for five years, he didn't have a clue as to what to do in the city; he was more comfortable giving directions around Berlin or Paris than he was giving them in Miami. Basically, he had a firm grasp of his college campuses and the routes he took to get there. It's not like he actually left the apartment for anything other than classes once Melissa moved away.

This problem led him back to the University of Miami quickly. On slow nights, he'd get in his car and drive to the campus, taking in whatever sports game or theatre show that might be on at that time. By late August, he'd been to countless American football, football, water polo, volleyball and cross-country meets. Basically, he was bored out of his mind but watching how the coaches in the team sports planned out their defences and offences at least kept him vaguely interested in what was being played out in front of him.

On the seventh day of September (he'd already called Ian the day before to let him know he'd lost the bet), Jackson sat around in his apartment looking at the sports schedule and shrugged at the thought of watching some women's field hockey. Basically, he figured (for he'd never actually seen a field hockey match before) it would be like football with glorified golf clubs. He didn't necessarily want to get there earlier, or on time for the match, for that matter, so he lazed around until about the middle of the first period. By the time he got there, the score was already shifted very unevenly towards the visiting team.

Always one to be on the winning side, Jackson went to the visitor's stands and sat down with his arms crossed over his chest as he watched the two teams battle it out. The visitors were from some other Florida team, that much he knew, but the name of the team wasn't on the scoreboard.

'Who are you here for?'

Jackson turned quickly to his side. 'Just here to watch.'

The man who asked the question raised an eyebrow before just turning back to watch the game. He was dressed to the nines in the team's attire and had a pin of some fresh-faced girl with long blonde hair and a toothy smile on his chest. After a few minutes of sitting uncomfortably next to the man, Jackson got up and walked to the edge of the field, leaning against the fence to look at the girls running up and down the pitch. The opposing team was definitely faster than the University of Miami and personally he thought their management was much better. They worked together seamlessly, and from the yelling, he thought he could pinpoint the base of their team pyramid.

She ran past him, her hands clutching the wooden stick. Her team was wearing little pleated skirts rather than the gym shorts the Miami girls were wearing, and the addition of the polo shirt and knee-high shin guards gave her the appearance of a schoolgirl. It didn't help that she had bouncy brown curls that had fallen out of her ponytail hanging down in her pale face. She was constantly screaming instructions to her teammates despite the fact that she was obviously out of breath; she seemed the over-working type. Around her upper arm was a band that, as far as he could tell, must have meant that she was the team captain because none of the other skirted girls had one. He watched as she passed the plastic ball to another girl and it went sailing past the goalkeeper.

The stands behind him erupted into cheers and the skirted girls threw their arms in the air and attacked the captain in their screaming mass.

'Score by University of Florida at 28:49 of the first period. Goal by number 18, Valdosta, assisted by team captain number 15, Reisert.'

'Reisert,' Jackson said with a smile, looking across the field at the woman who was now looking over in his direction. With a wide smile, she waved towards him and he looked behind him to see a couple that he figured were her parents.

By the time he looked back, the team had already gone back into playing formation and the clock started again. He enjoyed watching her move down the field, the quick way she ducked out of the path of oncoming players, the way she kept the ball on her side of the court.

'Coming to games for some ass? New, Jackson. New.'

Jackson nearly jumped over the fence when Melissa spoke right next to his ear. Turning quickly, he glared at her, but it was a little hard to glare to someone's face when there was a drooling one-and-a-half-year-old strapped to her chest. '... are you stalking me?'

'Yes,' she said, turning to look down at the pitch as she adjusted the other child on her hip. 'But really, I don't know what you did, but Poulain told me to come to Miami until the end of September.'

The cell phone strapped to her belt went off and she grumbled, handing the older child off to Jackson before grabbing it and walking off with her back to him. Jackson, surprised, held the child out an arm's length in front of him, each giving the other a helpless look. She just stared at him with huge brown eyes, her arms limp to her sides. Although Jackson looked over at Melissa for instruction, she was still talking animatedly at whoever it was at the other end and just held a hand up to him when he tried to say anything. So, as a last resort, Jackson just glared at the little girl and was surprised when she gave him a glare in return.

'Mum says your bark is worse than your bite.'

Jackson gaped. 'Do you even know what that means?'

'That you're not scary,' she said back, still hanging limply in his arms. 'Even though you think you are.'

Without warning, Jackson dropped her and caught her a foot or so later, which made her eyes grow wider. When he caught her, she grabbed onto his wrists, digging the ends of her little fingers into his skin with panic. He grinned at her as the horn signalled the beginning of the five-minute-long break between periods.

'Still not scary?' he asked.

As she glared at him, he saw that tears were collecting at the edge of her eyes as her face turned red. 'I'll cry and Mum will come over and hurt you!'

He rolled his eyes at her before dropping and catching her again. This time, however, she didn't bother giving him the warning talk and instead just started letting out a high-pitched wail. He nearly dropped her for real this time and then quickly pulled her to his chest, looking at the people around him who were now staring at him. She pulled her head away from his chest and kept screaming until Melissa walked over, placing her hand over the receiver of her cell phone.

'What did you do?'

'Nothing,' he said, grabbing the back of the girl's head and forcing it against him. 'We were just playing, right?'

Giving him an untrusting look, she raised the cell phone back to her ear. 'I'll call you later.'

Slipping the phone back onto her belt, she looked back at Jackson, who was now holding a very calm little girl who was sucking her thumb and grinning wickedly at her mother. Melissa gave her daughter a dark, punishing look.

'That's Agatha,' said Melissa then pointed to the sleeping child strapped to her. 'And this is Christopher.'

Pressing his lips close to Agatha's ear, he spoke just loud enough for her mother to hear. 'In the good old days, children like you were left to perish on windswept crags.'

Rolling her eyes, she looked down at the pitch where the players were starting to get into position once again. 'Which one are you looking at?'

'I just came to see the game.'

'Oh come on,' she replied, putting her hands on her hips. 'You were staring at one of them when I walked up.'

'The captain of the University of Florida team,' he finally said after a pause. 'But I didn't come here to see her; she just happened to come across my sight.'

They stood in silence for a few minutes, watching the game, until a goal was finally scored by the University of Miami. 'Working on any new jobs?'

'The organisation is on hiatus.'

'Are you serious?' she asked, turning to him.

'Just in North America,' he replied, nonchalant. 'I'm still doing satellite jobs for Europe, but I'm not allowed out of the country. Poulain doesn't want any of us flying either, so I'm stuck here in Miami.'

She narrowed her eyes. 'What are you not telling me?'

'I'm telling you as much as a civilian is allowed to know,' he replied curtly, giving her an icy look. 'You're not in the know anymore. How did you even find me here?'

'I was already at the game. My sister's playing and I came to watch her.'

Jackson was caught off-guard. 'Your sister? You have a sister?'

'I already said it, didn't I?' she snapped.

'Her name is Aunt Danielle,' Agatha said from around his neck area before changing her tone to let him know she was obviously mimicking someone. 'She's here on the World Society scholarship and we're very proud of her. Perhaps someday, Agatha, you can do the same.'

'I was standing on the other side, saw you, and figured I'd come over and exchange pleasantries,' she continued hastily.

'Very kind of you,' he said back, glaring down at the pitch. 'Would you like this back now?'

Reaching out, Melissa took her daughter, who was now grabbing tenaciously on to the collar of Jackson's shirt. They both tugged at her until she let go and Jackson angrily straightened his shirt.

'But Mum, he smells nice. I want to stay with him,' said Agatha in an extremely whiny voice as Melissa held her to her hip.

'No, say good-by to Jackson, Agatha,' Melissa said sharply, her eyes boring into Jackson.

'Good-by, Jackson,' Agatha said softly, waving a chubby hand at him before her mother turned and walked away.

With narrowed eyes, Jackson looked out at the Reisert girl's beautiful, bouncing brunette curls, imagining running his long fingers through it before stalking off himself, making a resolution that he wasn't going to go to another University of Miami sports game ever again. After wrestling through the crowd at the concession stand, he elbowed his way to his car and sped off, all the while thinking he should have just let Melissa move to New York City without intervening on her behalf to Matthias Poulain.

---

On the morning of 11 September, Jackson sat in his living room staring at the television and drinking a huge cup of coffee that he'd fetched from the Starbucks down the road from his condominium complex. Sipping the coffee, he kept his eyes set on the news; he expected that some time this morning would be the attack warned by the Middle East Delegate. CNN was silently playing on the screen, giving the same old news that he expected, but shortly before 9:00, there was a breaking news story and it showed the smoking north tower. He pressed the mute button once more and the condo filled with a woman's voice.

'Yeah. This just in. You're looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. CNN Center is just beginning to work on this story, obviously, calling our sources and trying to figure out exactly what happened, but clearly something relatively devastating happening this morning there on the south end of the island of Manhattan. That is once again, a picture of one of the towers of the World Trade Center.'

Jackson leaned back in his chair and was wondering what he'd do with the two hundred dollars that would piss off Lyna the most. Grumbling a bit, he got up from the seat and went to the kitchen, setting his coffee cup in the microwave and reheating it as he watched smoke billow from the tower. Once his coffee finished reheating, he downed it and went to brush his teeth, walking out into the living room once more to stare at the television. He brushed away merrily, watching the havoc and destruction on the television, but then jumped when another airliner appeared out of the corner of the screen and slammed into the other World Trade Centre building. Jackson was gaping at the screen, toothpaste foam slowly making its way out of his mouth, when the elevator door slipped open and Ian stepped in, taking off his shoes before walking to Jackson and giving him a one hundred dollar bill. When the younger man didn't take it, he just dropped it on the coffee table and sat down on the couch across from Jackson.

'Not much finesse.'

'It's overkill,' said Jackson, swallowing harshly. 'It can't be over though; Pedram said they were using planes from three airports, and this would cover just one or two.'

Ian looked at the screen from behind his glasses. 'They didn't have complete information. Perhaps they'd just narrowed it down to those three airports.'

'No,' said Jackson, shaking his head as he set his toothbrush next to the one hundred dollar bill. 'There's no way they'd go this far and not go ahead and hit something in Washington, DC.'

Shrugging a bit, Ian made a move to stand, but Jackson put his hand out, not taking his eyes from the television. 'Stay.'

Like a good dog, he scooted back against the cushions again and looked over at Jackson, who was wiping his lips with the back of his wrist. 'Is this bothering you?'

'No,' Jackson very obviously lied because he knew that Ian wouldn't call him on it—that's why he liked working with Ian so much more than working with Lyna. 'I don't think this is going to be good for the organisation, that's all.'

Ian was silent and watched the television with Jackson, both deep in thought until Jackson's phone rang. He stood and walked to the kitchen where the wireless phone was waiting in its cradle and picked it up, walking out of the room just enough so that he could lean against the wall of the archway separating the two rooms.

'Rippner.'

'So you win. Would you like it wired or just deposited straight into your account?'

'Deposit it into my account,' he replied, ducking back into the kitchen. 'Have you talked to Poulain yet?'

'No, I am back in the Czech Republic,' she said quite matter-of-factly. 'Just because you don't have a day job does not mean the rest of us can quit ours.'

Somewhere in the last six years, Jackson had forgotten that Lyna was a Czech language teacher at the small private international school that he attended in Prague. Suddenly, rather than worrying about anything else, he wondered what Ian did as a day job, but his musings were cut short by Lyna.

'Why do you wonder about Poulain?'

'I think we should have stepped in to stop this attack.'

Lyna laughed mirthfully. 'Getting soft in your old age, Jack?'

'I'm not worried about the people; I'm worried about the ramifications this will have for the organisation.'

'What ever do you mean?'

'Well, the people are scared now, yes, but what about in a couple of months? Years?' he said into the receiver as he went over to the window and looked down at the ocean. 'Fear doesn't last forever, and once it fades, people become very dangerous in their need for revenge.'

'So they will take out revenge on Al-Qaeda. That does not hurt us; that just eliminates competition.'

'But Lyna—'

'Just shut up,' she spat. 'You may have more support by Poulain and have a better position on your business card, but I have been in this for much longer than you have. A big lot of good you are, anyway. You can not even kill your own self.'

Jackson narrowed his eyes. 'I was right about the date and I will be right about this. Assassinations will mean less and less because death will be just a normal day-to-day event. People will harden to it just like they have in Israel and Palestine.'

She laughed again. 'I think you overestimate the human race.'

---

'Oh my God, Lisa, where have you been?' asked a panicked roommate named Hannah as Lisa Reisert walked into her apartment in Gainesville.

Holding up her field hockey stick, she forced a smile at the other girl. 'We had an unscheduled practise. Is everything all right?'

Hannah took her by the forearm and dragged her to the living room where their two other roommates were watching the television. The two girls didn't even bother to look up when their roommates walked in but were rather engrossed in what was on the television. One of them was crying, curled up with a couch pillow held to her chest and the other one was nervously biting her nails. Lisa followed their gazes to the smoke-covered screen.

'What... what happened?'

'They don't know yet,' Hannah said. 'Two planes hit the Twin Towers and one hit the Pentagon, but—'

'What do you mean "planes?"' asked Lisa, looking with wide eyes at her roommate.

'I mean like... commercial jets,' replied Hannah.

Lisa felt like a big block of ice had lodged itself in the pit of her stomach. 'Do they know where the planes came from?'

As if the reporter had heard Lisa, she went from the normal story about what had happened so far to break in with newer news. 'We have just received confirmation that the planes that hit the World Trade Centre this morning both originated out of Boston's Logan Airport. We are not yet sure where the plane that hit the Pentagon came from, but expect to have that information shortly. Again, we would like to repeat that as of 9:45 this morning, Eastern Standard Time, all air transportation has been halted over the United States and Canada. Once all flights currently in route are grounded, all air transportation will be stopped until further notice.'

Her legs shaking, Lisa planted herself on the couch between the two roommates who were still staring at the television. They all sat in silence that was punctured only by the occasional sniffle, the four watching the television with wide eyes. At 9:59, they watched as the first building collapsed and Lisa stood quickly, going into her room and closing the door behind her. Leaning against the door, she squeezed her eyes shut and slid down the wood. She'd lied to her roommate; really, she'd met with her parents, who'd driven up from Miami that morning. Over an early breakfast, they told her that they were planning to get a divorce and that her mother would be moving back to Dallas in the next couple of weeks. Leaving the meal prematurely, she'd taken her field hockey stick and gone to the track where she ran alone for an hour.

So, already in denial about the morning's events, she had this added on to it. It felt selfish and awful, but as she curled up at the base of the door, she cried more for herself than anyone else.


	18. 1 January 2002

A/N: I'm not gonna lie... this is my favourite chapter in the entire story.

---

Poulain kept delaying and delaying the opening of American operations once the terror alert system was initialised. It was far too hard to move people and their supplies from area to area, especially the assassins. Whilst the American managers studied the new systems with the help of their contacts at airports and within the government, the Europeans kept the business alive on the other side of the Atlantic. Services within Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia flourished as the Americas and to a certain extent the Middle East stagnated. Jackson spent his days studying the Miami airport carefully, but he had to be extremely covert because the state was under the careful scrutiny of the United States government after it came to light that the terrorists who participated in the attack all lived in Florida prior to 11 September.

Finally, on the first of January, as Jackson celebrated the ringing in of the New Year at the Miami office of the organisation, having been dragged there by his then-girlfriend, a clueless civilian working in the office, a toast was given to Jackson, who had just been faxed a document putting him back on active duty. As the people around him sipped their Kristal joyfully, he took the fax from one of the people in the office who actually knew the true aim of the organisation. He read it, smiling at the people who kept coming to shake hands with him. They all knew that he was stuck in Miami because their fearless leader wanted to keep his American businesspeople safe after the terrorist attacks, but very few people knew that he was one of the terrorists they talked about next to the water tank on work days.

'Congratulations,' said his girlfriend, taking the sides of his face and pressing her lips to his. He ran his fingers through her long, curly brown hair with a smile. 'But you're going to leave the city now, aren't you?'

He looked down into her pouting face, suddenly disgusted by that playgirl-ish, fluttery-eyed glance she was so fond of giving him when she wanted something. He felt the urge to hit her across the face, but instead twisted his fingers tightly into her curls and gave her a sad look.

'Yes, I'm leaving.'

Downing his flute of champagne, he pulled her to him and kissed her deeply, pressing into her mouth with his champagne-flavoured tongue. The ends of her curls teased the top of his hand as he kissed her, and in a sudden fit of rage, he let go of her and flung his champagne flute to the ground, sending the pieces shattering and the crowd into silence.

'Happy New Year, everyone,' he said with a winner of a smile before pushing past his girlfriend and out of the room.

As Jackson walked slightly inebriated to his car, he could hear the party inside counting down to the New Year. He got into the driver's seat, slammed the car door, lit up a cigarette, and turned on the engine, looking through the tall windows of the headquarters where everyone was toasting and smiling, even his solo girlfriend. Holding the cigarette in his teeth, he put the car into gear and drove off at top speed towards South Miami, wishing it were just any Tuesday rather than a huge holiday. He threw the fax from Poulain in the passenger's seat; what upset him the most was seeing Lyna face-to-face again. He'd enjoyed the time away from her.

Taking a sharp turn, he delved farther into South Miami and found a bar he vaguely remembered being dragged to by Melissa one birthday. It wasn't too fancy, in fact it was a bit run down, but the lights were always dimmed and the music classic. He parked his car in a crowded lot and walked over to the door of the place, trying to play it straight. Perhaps it was Ian who took him, he realised as he pushed open the door and the sounds of smooth jazz filled his ears.

Apparently at some point during his drive, people had started filtering home (or perhaps they were never at this bar at all) and just about fifteen patrons remained scattered about the place. There were a couple of empty stools at the bar, so he took one and gestured to the barkeep. The man walked over and looked at Jackson warily, but didn't say anything.

'I'll have an Absolutely Screwed,' he said, and the man turned, but Jackson cleared his throat to re-grab his attention. 'With Grey Goose, if you have it. Ah, and Grand Marnier rather than Triple Sec.'

The man turned back and began mixing up Jackson's drink as he looked up and down the bar. There were a couple of other guys who looked absolutely drunk off their asses but still managed to talk very loudly to each other about nothing in particular, an older woman who very obviously was trying to look younger with her over-tanned skin and bottle-blonde hair, a couple in the middle of a very noisy make-out session, and finally, at the very end of the bar nearly completely enveloped by shadows, a woman about his age. He watched her as he downed three of the cocktails and finally, in his completely inebriated state, decided it was a winner idea to go try to pick her up. Taking his fourth cocktail, he wove over to her.

'Do you mind if sit here?'

She looked up at him with bloodshot eyes, and from the pattern her mascara had taken, he could guess she'd been crying most of the evening. As her head turned, she nearly fell off the stool, but he managed to steady her with one hand, pushing her back towards the bar as he sat down. She slumped down onto her elbows, pushing back her hair from her temples. As she sighed, Jackson could almost taste the vodka, lime and cranberry juice oozing out of her pores.

Looking over at her, he smiled. 'Bad day?'

'Beginning of a bad year,' she slurred. 'Finished graduate school last month... started a job.'

'What are you doing?' he asked, taking a sip at his drink.

'Manager,' she said simply, running her finger on the edge of her glass.

He raised an eyebrow. 'Same here.'

Her finger stopped, but she didn't look at him. 'My parents are getting divorced.'

Jackson laughed a little into his drink. 'Aren't you a little old to have parents who are getting divorced?'

She looked at him in her peripheral vision but then looked back to the glass. 'Are your parents still together?'

'They're dead.'

'Oh,' she said, looking up at him uncomfortably. 'I'm sorry.'

'Don't be,' he replied quickly, downing his drink and then making a bitter face as he snapped at the bartender and pointed to the empty glass. 'I'm not.'

She furrowed her brow and curled in a little before slipping off of the stool and steadying herself on the edge of the bar. Digging into the little purse hanging from her shoulder, she threw some bills on the counter and then began to stagger away from him, but he spun around and caught her by the wrist.

'Let go of me,' she said, her speech clear as day but her eyes blurred with intoxication.

'It's not safe for you to go out like this, not on a night like this one,' he replied, loosening his grip. 'I can take you home.'

She laughed a bit. 'You move quickly.'

'What's your name?'

He could see her mind moving as quickly as possible before she answered. 'Celeste.'

'Is that why your purse has an 'L' on it?' he asked, giving her a cold look.

'I borrowed it,' she replied with a little smile, taking her arm from him before backing away on shaky but shapely legs. 'It was nice meeting you, Mister...?'

'Poulain,' he said quickly but confidently. 'Christian Poulain.'

'Not a very American name,' she replied, obviously less tense.

'I'm not American, I'm Swiss,' he admitted. 'But I was born and raised in New York.'

She gave an affirming noise, nodding her head a little so that one of her curls fell out of her already loose French twist. 'What are you doing here in Miami, Mr Poulain?'

Without thinking, he reached out a long arm and curled the hair around his finger. She held her breath as she looked at him, not sure how to respond.

'Business,' he finally said, looking into her tear-cleared green eyes. 'I work for my adoptive father's company.'

'The World Society,' she said with certainty.

He nodded his head, tipping it to one side, puckering his lips, and narrowing his eyes. 'Good guess. You know your International Business.'

'A required course,' she replied simply. 'Your father is very... influential.'

He smiled at her choice of words. 'Indeed he is. And how is my influence?'

She laughed. 'Lacking.'

With Jackson gaping after her, she walked unsteadily out of the bar and found her way to the curb. By the time Jackson threw down an over payment onto the counter and followed her, she was already getting into a taxi. He caught the door before it closed and looked in at her.

'At least tell me your real name,' he pleaded. 'And then I'll leave you alone.'

'Lisa Reisert,' she replied before reaching out and taking the door from him.

As the cab drove off, he watched after it and then staggered off to finish his evening. By the next morning, however, neither of them had absolutely any recollection of the events that transpired. Lisa woke up in the entry hall of her apartment with a pounding headache; Jackson woke up in his condominium on the coast, realised after a short while that he had absolutely no clue where his car was, and was completely convinced he bypassed the system when he had no hangover. That, of course, was before he had the hangover pass over him when he was awake, and he immediately wished for the sweet release of death. The New Year was ushered in for them twenty minutes away from each other but completely alone.


	19. 6 May 2002

Despite being on call once again, Jackson didn't appropriate an internationally noticeable job until around his twenty-fifth birthday. All of the planning was finished by April, so he flew overseas to Switzerland—when he arrived at the international headquarters in Geneva, Lyna was sitting there waiting for him, but he breezed right past her and into the patron's office. Feeling completely ignored and quite angry because of it, she followed right on his tail and slammed the door to Poulain's office closed. Jackson calmly walked to sit in one of the chairs in front of Poulain, setting his briefcase on his knees and popping the case open. He pulled out a thick manila file and set it on Poulain's desk, pushing it towards the older man.

'I'll be using an assassin recommended to me by Hélène,' he said smoothly and Lyna immediately glared at him. 'I worked with him in Nepal.'

'He can not make a decision like that,' she spat. 'That is not his to decide! He was given an associate, and that associate is me.'

Poulain looked between the two of them. Lyna, of course, had been on for more than twice as long as Jackson, but Jackson was definitely his favoured employee. That wasn't the only reason why he leaned towards the support of Jackson in most given situations—whereas Lyna was constantly upset and showing it with outbursts, Jackson typically kept everything very demure, which was much more dangerous. Lyna would snap a person's neck immediately, but as Jackson was talking to someone, he would be plotting the best way to off him without pulling blame back on himself.

The old man cleared his throat. 'If Jackson wishes to try and use a different associate, then I'm willing to entertain his curiosity.'

Lyna's jaw dropped. 'I have been with this company since—'

'1981, yes, I know,' replied Poulain, putting a hand up to silence her. 'And the organisation is incredibly pleased with your contributions. But this is just one assignment.'

Gritting her teeth, Lyna looked over at Jackson, angered by the self-righteous grin on his face as he looked at her. 'Well, Lyna, I suppose you don't have to be in on this meeting then.'

Poulain clicked his tongue. 'Lyna may stay in case we can't find a substitute for her in time.'

Lyna returned the grin, which made the two of them look very much like children in day care. The Swiss man came to the slow realisation that the two absolutely hated each other and it was probably in the best interest of the organisation and his plans for Jackson to split them up as soon as possible. Perhaps Ian could be cleared for international assignments, but now wasn't the time to decide that. As the two members opposite him glared daggers at one another, he looked over Jackson's plan for the assassination of Dr Wilhelmus Simon Petrus Fortuijn and gave it his mental seal of approval.

---

A month later, Jackson sat on a bench in Hilversum, the Netherlands with ear buds in his ears, hiding partially behind a copy of _Die Welt_. He was listening loudly and carefully to a radio interview with Dr Pim Fortuyn; after all, he spoke German relatively well, but Dutch he had to concentrate on. The man was going off on his usual tangent about Islam and Muslims, which made Jackson frown—rarely did he feel the same about a target as his employers.

'I don't hate Islam. I consider it a backward culture. I have travelled much in the world. And wherever Islam rules, it's just terrible. All the hypocrisy. It's a bit like those old Reformed Protestants. The Reformed lie all the time. And why is that? Because they have norms and values that are so high that you can't humanly maintain them. You also see that in that Muslim culture. Then look at the Netherlands. In what country could an electoral leader of such a large movement as mine be openly homosexual? How wonderful that that's possible. That's something that one can be proud of. And I'd like to keep it that way, thank you very much,' said the politician and Jackson tightened his grip on the newspaper. 'I am also in favour of a cold war with Islam. I see Islam as an extraordinary threat, as a hostile religion.'

The radio announcer gave his little blurb at the end of the broadcast and they cut to commercial. In the distance, cathedral bells rang in five in the evening; it would only be minutes now before Fortuyn exited the radio station only to be shot by Nils from the building across the street. Everything was going to plan so far, but there was an inkling of discomfort in Jackson's spine that he couldn't ascertain the reason for. Finally, the doors of the radio station opened and Jackson looked over the top of the newspaper to see the radio delegates giving their good-byes to the politician, who was dressed in an impeccable suit. Once the doors closed, Fortuyn stepped down the stairs and started towards the car park, where his limousine was parked.

When the man paused for a moment to look through the outside pocket of his briefcase, the sound of a gunshot rent the air. Jackson's brow furrowed; Nils was supposed to wait until the politician was in his car, shoot the man and then hit the gas tank to at least burn off some of the evidence of their transgressions. Yanking out his ear buds, Jackson looked over at the man who was writhing on the ground and was about to go after Nils when another man appeared in his line of sight and stood over Fortuyn, shooting him seven more times in the head and throat. Dropping the newspaper out of his hand, Jackson just gaped at the scene, going over possible scenarios in his head. Did Poulain hire someone else behind his back? No, the old man liked him too much. Could it be just a random coincidence? There was no way—what were the odds that an assassination would take place at the same time as he'd planned it to happen? And then it hit him.

'Lyna,' he growled as he watched the gunman sprint from the scene, not even bothering to dispose of his gun.

A crowd of onlookers pulled in by the sound of gunshots followed the assassin, and before Jackson knew it, all hell had broken loose. To be safe, he just walked up to stand with the other people who were watching from the edges as a few people tried to help the fallen politician; nothing was more suspect than someone walking away from something that was almost like a human train wreck. The normal human reaction was to move closer and have something to tell the family over dinner or call your best friend about as soon as you were ushered off by the police.

Within a couple of minutes, the paramedics showed up and pushed away the people who'd been trying to stop the bleeding. The police were quick on their heels, having already apprehended the assassin, and in short order had the area cordoned off and had started to send people away from the scene. Jackson waited until most of the people started to filter off and went with the largest group; Nils was across the street with a different group. They made eye contact for an instant before each headed for different parts of the city.

---

'She sabotaged my plan!' yelled Jackson, standing up with one hand in a fist on Poulain's desk. He was pointing the other at Lyna, who was standing by the billiards table with her arms crossed.

'I did, and I am damn proud of it,' she hissed back before spitting on the floor in his direction.

Poulain was reclined in his desk chair looking at the two of them angrily. 'You are supposed to be a professional, Vasylyna. This assignment was given to Jackson for Jackson to carry out, and I gave him permission to use another assassin in your place. This is most appalling behaviour and I am very disappointed.'

Jackson moved to say something to her, but Poulain cut him off.

'Don't say a word, Jackson,' he said, pointing at the younger man. 'You have just as much blame in this as she does for letting this go on.'

For a moment, Jackson gaped but quickly went back to an emotionless look and then sunk into his chair.

'Miss Melinyshyn, you're off-duty until further notice and I'm voiding your contract with Jackson,' he said, looking to the woman who was now leaning against the billiards table. 'In addition, you will be paying Jackson's salary for the hit.'

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence before Lyna crossed the room with a couple of long strides and knocked Jackson out of his chair, pinning him to the floor as she clamped her bony hands around his neck. At first, he thrashed around with wide eyes but after a moment reached his hands up to grab around her throat. There was a confusing rustling before Jackson came to rest sitting over Lyna, quickly pressing his whole weight onto her neck. Poulain rang for his guards as Lyna started clawing at Jackson's face, trying to get him off of her. The door flew open and four men came in, prying Jackson from Lyna and pulling them away from each other with Lyna kicking as hard as she could at Jackson.

Like a spitting cat, she fought against her captors as the guards holding Jackson let go of him. He stood still, breathing heavily with his hair falling in his eyes and had only a moment of fleeting terror as he watched Lyna yank the gun from the holster of one of Poulain's bodyguards and shoot five times, hitting him four times and the ceiling once as all four men pinned her to the ground. Completely stunned, Jackson stood with wide eyes as blood ran down his shirt from his right shoulder, left-side abdomen, and just below his sternum—another bullet had cut through his right femur, but he was quick to shift his weight onto the left side. Poulain rushed over to him and led him to the billiard table as he yelled for more backup.

Jackson could hear Lyna's screams slowing and could only assume that she'd been drugged. He looked up at the lights over the billiard table and swallowed a bit, wetting his dry mouth as Poulain pulled open his shirt and looked at the bullet holes. There was a lot of movement around him as the first aid trained employees worked on cleaning and checking the wounds. He smiled lightly as the angelic face of Poulain's secretary Anaïs appeared above him, dabbing at his chest worriedly.

'Get his medical records,' said Poulain suddenly, checking Jackson's pulse.

'Sir, is it really a good idea to take him to the hospital?' whispered Anaïs.

Jackson's head lolled to the side and his eyes rolled back in his head. Poulain immediately reached up and slapped him harshly across the face. In response, Jackson opened his eyes wide, almost immediately threw up blood, and then laid his head to one side with his mouth open, trying to speak to the people around him. His lips were starting to tint blue and his breath was coming in short spurts before he coughed up more blood onto the already bloody billiards table. The organisation employees turned him on his side and Poulain's secretary crawled up on the table with him and calmly put his head in her lap, holding his hair back from his face and pressing her hand to his clammy forehead.

'I said get his medical records!' Poulain said angrily. 'And call 114. We need an ambulance immediately.'

As two of the men walked quickly out, Poulain took off his suit jacket and threw it over Jackson; there was nothing else they could do at the office, so they could only keep him as comfortable as possible until the ambulance arrived. With his secretary keeping Jackson awake, Poulain turned to look at Lyna, who was sprawled out and drugged on the floor.

'Go ahead and take her to one of the psychiatric evaluation rooms in the back,' he said to the men around her. 'And intercept the police. We don't need them snooping around back here.'

---

Thousands of miles away, Lisa sat up straight in her bed, awoken by a nightmare. She pulled her sheets up to her chest before dropping her head to take in the smell of fabric softener. Tonight was one of those nights where she resigned herself to being Daddy's little girl after a tough day of work; they sat around with each other watching comedy marathons and eating Chinese take-out before a goodnight kiss. She'd drift off to sleep with the sound of her insomniac father working in his office on some case. The flipping of book pages was soothing to her, one of the sounds of her childhood. It was weird, however, not having the sound punctured by her mother's low whisper pleading him to go to bed.

The door to her room opened a crack and her father peeked in. 'Leese? Is everything all right?'

'Yeah, I just had a nightmare,' she replied softly, relaxing as he came over and sat down on the edge of the bed.

'Want to tell me about it?' he asked, reaching out to poke her nose.

She smiled broadly at him. 'It was nothing, really. Just a stupid, completely unfeasible nightmare. I'm already forgetting it.'

He smiled back at her. 'Then get some sleep.'

'You too,' she said, giving him a serious look.

'I'll try,' he replied before reaching out and pulling her into a tight hug that she eagerly returned. 'I love you, Leese.'

'I love you too, Daddy.'


	20. Late May 2002

'Are you feeling all right, my boy?'

Jackson looked lazily over at Poulain through a thick drug-induced haze as the older man slipped a cap back on the hypodermic in his hand. His seat was very comfortable indeed, and the stewardess was very good looking, but he wasn't one to enjoy the complete loss of the function of his extremities. He'd been angry—in pain, yes, but also angry—when Poulain asked his Geneva-based organisation-hired doctor about drugging him for the entire flight. In the end, they'd given him enough morphine to kill a small mammal and then sent Poulain and his 'son' off to go on a trip to Miami. Nothing was more terrible than being wheeled through an airport in a wheelchair, especially when one has absolutely no control over his neck in regards to whether or not it actually holds his head up. He slowly blinked his eyes before rolling his head back to the centre and closing his eyes, a bit of drool running out of the corner of his mouth.

In other words, had he been able to murmur something coherent, he most likely would have told Poulain to go fuck himself.

'Oh my,' said the stewardess who had just come into the first class cabin from the airport, bending down to look at them. 'Is he sick?'

Poulain gave her a smile. 'My son was in an accident a couple of months ago and has had to have a lot of surgery. His doctor said it would probably be better to drug him the entire way from Geneva to Miami than to run the risk of him being in horrible pain for the entire flight.'

'Poor guy,' she said, putting a hand to her lips as Jackson opened his eyes and looked at her blankly. 'Was it a car accident?'

'No,' he replied, patting Jackson's hand. Jackson rolled his eyes, but it looked like he was just responding to the drugs coursing through his system. 'His sister had a psychotic episode and shot him in the liver, small intestine and sub-clavian artery. Nearly bled to death on the billiards table, didn't you, dear Christian?'

The woman shifted her weight on her feet a bit and gave a little, forced smile to him. 'Well, we have a wheelchair for him and your car is already waiting outside of the terminal, Mr Poulain.'

A little under forty-five minutes later, their car pulled under the portico at the Lux Atlantic resort. For whatever reason, showing up at this place gave Jackson just about the same amount of foreboding as the Fortuyn assassination, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out why. Before he knew it, he was being lifted out of the car by one of Poulain's burly assistants and set in a wheelchair. He tried slipping out of it to escape from whatever was bothering him, but all that did was get him a strong squeeze to the shoulder by Poulain before he was pushed into the marble lobby. From the entrance, he could see a familiar outline and realised what the foreboding was about.

This was most definitely not how Jackson wanted to look on the first time he met that field hockey player face-to-face.

As they got to the counter, Jackson closed his eyes and dropped his head to his chest, his drug-addled brain telling him that if he did that, he would be invisible to her. She was bright and cheery as she greeted them, and it took everything in him (well, not really... it took a lot of energy to do anything) to not lift his head to look at that smiling face and those bouncy curls.

'Welcome to the Lux Atlantic,' she said, and he could hear her fingernails tap on the granite counter. 'You must be Mr Poulain.'

'Yes,' Poulain replied, patting Jackson on the shoulder. 'It is very professional of you to prepare your knowledge of me, Miss...?'

'Reisert,' Lisa replied warmly. 'But you can call me Lisa, Mr Poulain. Now, I see here that we have a suite for you. How many key cards will you be needing?'

'Let's go with three,' he said to her. 'One for me, one for my assistant, and one for my son. He'll be leaving to go back to his condominium in a couple of days, but I'd still like to be able to have him visit me.'

'Ah...' Lisa said, but there was slight hesitation in her voice when she looked down at the seemingly catatonic Jackson.

'Oh, don't mind him now,' said Poulain, finally taking his hand off of Jackson. 'He's typically a very sharp man, has his Masters and baccalaureates and all that sort of thing, but he has lots of morphine charging through his veins right now.'

'Morph—'

'He was in an accident,' interrupted Poulain. 'Don't worry, my dear Miss Reisert, we have his medications completely legally, even by American law.'

'Of course,' she said, and Jackson could tell she was smiling before there was some typing and she swiped through the key cards. 'Here you are, Mr Poulain. And I hope you feel better soon...?'

'Christian.'

'Christian,' she said with a lilt of recognition in her voice; if Jackson had been looking up at her when they walked away, he would have seen a look of confusion cast across her delicate features.

---

By three days later, Jackson was walking with the help of a pair of crutches and had flushed nearly all of the morphine out of his system. Although feeling much better, he was still under the care of a Miami-based doctor by the name of Elisabeth, whom he could only assume was Dr Greene's ex-wife 'Lizzy' that he had spoken of the year before. She was an odd woman; with other patients she was incredibly caring and understanding, but once she came within a few feet of any organisation operative, she became a complete and utter bitch. Something about the duality of her nature warned him to be on high alert around her, so whenever he had an appointment with her (which happened to be every day) he always kept her mind on the fact that he was the prize of Matthias Poulain so that she wouldn't be tempted to, say, mysteriously kill him.

Jackson was relieved to be back at his condo after four months of bothersome absence even though he spent most days doing repetitive cleaning or laying around watching the History Channel, which he found to be a wonderful teaching aide in what not to do for assassinations and coups. He was aware that Poulain was still in town because the office, where he went every couple of days, was incredibly tense and no one was sitting around adjusting screen savers or trying to mask personal calls as business calls. Everything was running in a very organised manner, so it gave Jackson very little to do.

Finally, after two weeks of just missing him at the office, Jackson was called by Poulain to go to a farewell lunch. His business in the Miami office was complete and things in Europe were much more pressing than business in American, where it was still difficult to work because of the attacks of the year before. So, at exactly ten in the morning, Jackson appeared at the Lux Atlantic resort wearing a very finely tailored suit with a pair of dark sunglasses and his long fringe covering his eyes. He'd elected to bother with just one of his crutches but was mostly walking on his own volition.

When he looked across the lobby to the desk, there was no one behind it, but after a moment the curly-haired field hockey player stood and looked up at him with a smile. 'Welcome to the Lux Atlantic.'

He walked over to the counter and leaned a bit against it before speaking in his deep voice with a little hint of a Swiss French accent in it. 'Hello, I'm here to visit my father, but I seem to have forgotten my key card back at my condominium. Would it be too difficult to have you make another?'

Her eyes lit up. 'You look as though you're feeling much better, Mr Poulain.'

'I am, _merci beaucoup, mademoiselle_,' he purred, and she seemed to blush a little as she handed him the key card.

'Have a nice visit,' she said to him as he took the key card from her.

'And you have a lovely day, Miss Reisert.'

It was most certainly strategic that he'd never removed his sunglasses during their entire conversation.

---

After a couple of hours, Lisa watched the Poulains leave the hotel with an assistant, both of them talking in very fast French. The younger Poulain still had his sunglasses on, which she found a little odd, but for all she knew he'd had an eye exam or something earlier in the day and had dilated pupils. She mused over his deep voice and strong features as she checked in a few people, but once the newest member of the Lux Atlantic team came in to take her place, Lisa decided to take her lunch break. After taking off her nametag, she went out the back door.

As she walked to the employee parking lot, she dug through her purse and found her keys. There were several places she was considering for lunch: maybe that new Mexican place, perhaps the same old Thai place she loved going to or the Italian place that she always went to with her Dad on his birthday. Finally, after a few minutes of mental deliberation in the driver's seat, she set off for the Italian restaurant whilst listening to her favourite radio station and singing along. When she reached the restaurant, she was surprised to see that there were very few cars in the parking lot but regardless parked and walked up to the front door humming the last song that she'd heard on the radio. She pulled on the handle of the door and found that it was locked, so she put her hand on the door and looked through the glass, trying to see if there was some sign of life on the other side.

'Do you need something, ma'am?' asked a voice from behind her, and she jumped.

'Oh,' she said, turning around. 'I was just coming here to get lunch, but I guess—'

'It's closed for renovation,' he replied, reaching to put his hand on the door over her shoulder. 'It should be open again in a couple of weeks.'

'That... that's good,' she said uneasily, swallowing hard as the sound of a nail gun air compressor began whirring inside of the restaurant. 'I guess I should just... go someplace else then...'

Quickly, he placed his other arm under her own and smirked. 'Why in such a hurry?'

In a split second, she ducked out of his grip and started trying to run off, but he grabbed her by the hair. Screaming, she scratched at his hand, but he just pulled out a knife and pressed it to her throat. She stopped immediately and didn't fight as he put an arm around her waist, pulling her over to the pavement on the other side of the restaurant. Tears were burning her eyes as the knife pressed against her skin, but she knew she couldn't do anything. Her feet dragged on the ground and as he yanked her off of the sidewalk, one of her shoes pulled off.

'Please,' she begged with a little sniffle. 'Please... I don't have much money on me. People... people will know I'm missing. I'm expected back—'

'Oh, I'm not going to kill you,' the man assured her, and Lisa felt the most awesome terror she'd ever felt before pierce her core.

'No... no, no, no,' she cried as he pulled her to the back of the restaurant.

The back parking lot was completely empty. With the restaurant closed, there were no food deliveries or employees on their smoking breaks, so the area was deserted. It was completely shaded from the mid-day sun, and the wall that he pushed her against had a dumpster on one side and the delivery platform on the other. In other words, there was no way that someone would easily come upon them, and therefore no way that Lisa knew to escape.

'You're such a pretty girl, aren't you?' he breathed against her, pressing the knife right against the apex of her jaw and neck. 'Luscious lips, glossy curls...'

Lisa squeezed her eyes shut as he caressed one of her breasts, and tears fell down her cheeks. Only a few moments later, his hand had dropped to the hem of her Lux Atlantic dress and started rolling it up, looking hungrily at the lacy edging of her panties. He licked his lips lecherously as he curled his thumb into the silky fabric over her soft hip, slowly pulling it down as he lowered the knife to her chest unknowingly. In a moment of absolute desperation and without much thought, she kicked him square in the stomach and as he clutched it breathlessly, she ran, but he pursued her just a second later.

He was spry and caught up with her before she could get to a window where she could bang to get the construction workers' attention. As he caught her by the dress, she heard the fabric rip and had a little burst of hope for escape before he brought around his other hand and held the knife, point down, against her chest. Tears were falling freely down her face now as she grabbed at his arm, which was once again against her waist squeezing oppressively. His lips brushed the edge of her ear.

'I wouldn't try that again, pretty girl. I'd hate to have to kill you.'

He dragged her back to the place where he'd held her before and shoved her against the wall. Her head smacked against it and she saw spots before falling down to her knees, watching helplessly as he undid his belt and unzipped his fly.

'You know, I've been watching you for awhile now,' he said, licking his lips again as he pushed his jeans down from his hips. 'I used to see you at your field hockey games when you were in high school. A bit of a late bloomer, but I see it was all worth it.'

Bending down, he reached out and grabbed her foot, pulling her into a laying position and scratching her legs and arms against the rough concrete. With a quick motion, he shoved a handkerchief in her mouth and ripped a piece of duct tape from a nearly spent spool that one of the construction workers had thrown out. He placed it neatly over her mouth before tapping her cheek and smiling.

'Look at your face, all red like when you play,' he said before clenching the knife between his teeth and looking down at her ripped dress.

The dress had rent up the right seam, and with deft hands he ripped it more, leaving just the thin under-dress against her skin. He reached under the lining fabric, running his rough hands up her soft skin before harshly pulling her panties down. She closed her eyes again as he penetrated her, the action shooting pain up her entire torso. As he began thrusting into her, the knife came to rest over her right breast, which was covered by only the thin lining fabric. It didn't take long for the knife to cut deeply into the skin—she tried to scream against the gag, but that just made him press the knife harder.

By this point, her arms and legs were bleeding from constant battering against the pavement. The blood from the cut on her chest was rolling down her shoulder and tickling her neck, making her hair stick to the skin. In the back of her mind, she thought she heard footsteps, but she knew it was only wishful thinking. She was going to die here.

The man groaned at his release and collapsed against her, making it hard for her to breathe, especially because she was upset and unable to use her mouth for deeper breaths. The knife moved dangerously close to the skin over her jugular vein and she half-wished he would just stab her to release her from the misery of this situation. Exsanguination by severance of the jugular seemed a feasible alternative to being stabbed to death in the chest or stomach.

'Is anyone back here?' asked a voice from the other side of the dumpster and the rapist sat up straight before pulling out of her and standing, tripping over her legs.

By the time the construction worker made it within Lisa's sight, the man had already pulled up his pants and was running away from the scene. The grey-haired man was more worried about Lisa than chasing the rapist but screamed for help from the other workers inside as he dropped down to pull the duct tape off of her face and remove the handkerchief from her mouth. She gasped with sobs as the man pulled out his cell phone and dialled 911.

'Hello, I... I've just found a woman who's been raped,' the man said quickly into the phone as he used the handkerchief from her mouth to dab at the cut on her chest. 'The rapist was here when I found her, but he got away... yeah, I'm at Il Fornaio in Coconut Grove. Thank you.'

Dropping the phone on the ground, the man took off his work coat and lifted Lisa's upper body, pushing the coat under her and then laying her back down as he brushed her hair away from her face. A couple of other construction workers came out back and after describing the man to them, he sent them off in the direction the man had fled. In a few minutes, the sounds of an ambulance and police cars filled the air, and soon Lisa was being lifted into the ambulance with her hand still grasping the construction worker's. A paramedic took Lisa's hand in his place and he stepped away to talk to the police.

'Do you know her name?' asked a police officer as the paramedics closed the doors of the ambulance and drove off.

'I found her purse,' said the construction worker, pointing over by the dumpster. 'Her wallet's probably in there.'

Another police officer picked it up and handed it to the officer in charge. The officer opened the purse and pulled out Lisa's wallet, finding her ID and reading the information. 'Lisa Reisert.'

'Joe Reisert's daughter,' said the other officer. 'He works in the district attorney's office.'

'Call her father then,' replied the officer in charge as he began walking to his squad car. 'Tell him to meet us at the hospital.'


	21. Spring 2003 to Early 2004

A/N: Two more chapters after this one, then I'll start posting Bejerot's Diagnosis, yaaaay. And I've started writing the completely new Heir Apparent too, but don't tell the NaNoWriMo people because, like, it's not November yet.

---

Jackson moved back to his Berlin apartment in February 2003. Two operations were already in the works for the year—one in Serbia in March and the other in Austria in May—so it was in the best interest of the organisation to just keep him on the Continent for that window of time. Besides, he was to actually participate in the second of them, an art theft, so it would be better for him to be able to visit the art museum in Vienna several times before the execution of the plan so there would be less suspicion cast upon him. So he lived from February to September of the year as Karl Müller, citizen of Germany originally from the Schleswig-Holstein region Denmark-bordering city of Flensburg who had absolutely nothing to do with the 12 March assassination of Zoran Dindic. He was just down in Austria visiting his girlfriend and his favourite art museum, of course.

By May, the security guards and ticket people at the Kunsthistorischen Museum in Vienna knew him by name and face, so he felt that it was safe to participate in the theft of the Saliera, which was covered in scaffolding for its reconstruction. Because of the cover, no camera was able to catch him or his team on video, so they all managed to get off scot-free without any issue. When Karl Müller came to visit the museum a couple of days later, he expressed his unhappiness at the lack of the beautiful golden art piece and commiserated with all of the employees, all the time laughing inwardly at the fact that he knew that the piece was, in fact, now sitting safely in the home of his contract employer in rural Sweden.

After the Kunsthistorischen heist, he spent a good deal of time studying the Munch Museum in Norway; a new assignment that had come in from a wealthy Portuguese man who was interested in attaining two of Edvard Munch's paintings for his new trophy wife. By September, he was comfortable enough with the plans of the museum to excuse himself from Europe and return to doing the day-to-day at the organisation's Miami base, where the rumour was that Jackson had spent all that time abroad because Poulain was working on the legality of placing him 'next in line for succession,' as they said, 'to the throne of the World Society.' Jackson had absolutely no idea where they'd attained this information or whether there were any truth in any part of it, but it was slightly suspect how the people 'in the know' suddenly seemed to treat him a lot better after a few of them travelled abroad to a meeting of regional heads.

Jackson returned to Europe in late July, this time settling in Stockholm as Alexei Femerov. It was simple taking part in the August theft at the Munch Museum—he even got to drive the getaway car, which was an Audi A6. He liked how the car handled as he sped along the Oslo roads away from the scene of the crime and made a mental note to test drive new Audis as soon as he got back to the United States. Jackson personally delivered the two paintings to Portugal, flying by private jet from rural Norway (where he had sadly abandoned the Audi) to the coastal Portuguese city of Figueira de Foz; he made sure to pick up souvenirs for his Swedish neighbours and, when he got back to Scandinavia, expressed shock over the disappearance of their neighbouring country's famous works of art, _The Scream_ and _Madonna_. To be honest, he was surprised anyone would miss them, but of course he preferred a different, more classical art style to the Expressionistic style of Munch. If they'd asked him to steal something from the Mucha Museum in Prague, for example, he'd probably have stolen something for himself also.

Because the December assassination of Heorhiy Kyrpa was to take place in the Ukraine, the recently reactivated Lyna Melinyshyn was put on as the assassin in charge. Rather than ever having to see her or even hear her voice, Jackson sent all of the plans for the post-Christmas assassination to Poulain's office and boarded the next plane back to Miami, arriving back in the country with his American passport just after Thanksgiving. By the beginning of December, he'd received a call from headquarters letting him know that Lyna had settled in as the new toy of Kyrpa and was now living in his Bortnychi holiday home—the assassination date of 27 December had been accepted by the employer and everything was on target, so he rested.

Lisa's life over those two years, however, was stunningly different. Once a very outgoing and overly happy Daddy's girl, she had spent more time falling into herself than interacting with anyone outside of work. She used to drive to Gainesville or other places in northern Florida whenever she had some time off to party with her sorority sisters from college, but immediately after the rape, she stopped going anywhere. She didn't even go out to lunch anymore—once she was safe at work, she was there until she went home that night.

She worked longer hours too, rarely taking a break, dulling the memory of the day by keeping her mind on the constant tasks of being a manager of a popular resort hotel. She was a professional to the core, and within a few months, every single regular of the place knew her by name but no one knew why it was that the relatively laconic manager of the earlier years had turned into such a chatty, helpful woman. Lisa had opted to tell no one, not even her closest work associates, what had happened that day in the parking lot. She didn't want the constant sad looks or the underlying pity in their tones when they spoke to her; she just wanted everything to be the status quo, even if it meant a loss of her innocent personality. She figured that most of them just thought that she'd finally grown up.

Despite the pleads of both of her parents, she'd refused to go through counselling because of the inherent embarrassment of the issue and assured both of them, perhaps falsely, that she was completely fine. She never noticed that she'd stopped doing her normal little things like playing on a local field hockey team, happily calling her grandmother in Texas every Tuesday evening, or spending weekends at her Dad's house. Everything was the here and now and she felt safer that way. Like nearly every victim of rape, she had some twisted idea that it was her fault that it happened, her fault that she'd been so carefree and immature, her fault that she had been so cutesy and peppy. Those measly twenty minutes out of her entire twenty-six years of existence completely changed her outlook on life.

She alienated everyone and it was nearly a year and a half after it happened that she even mustered the courage to start going back to the bar just about a block away from her apartment. There she would sit, always on alert, always being in the thick of things rather than sitting in her old favourite spot in some dark corner where she could people watch. Lisa wasn't exactly sure how to deal with men anymore, so she didn't. Where she was once flirty and slightly cocky, she was now dull and uninterested. Once the girl who brought a new boyfriend home every weekend, she was now the girl who had her father wondering if he'd ever have grandchildren.

Almost every week, she had her mother calling her threatening an intervention followed by her father calling to assure her that her mother was lying. After awhile, her father started sending her self-help books and although she ignored them at first, she began reading them on nights when she had nightmares and couldn't stay asleep. Sitting in her living room with the security alarm on and a bowl of cold scrambled eggs set in her bent legs, she'd read through all of the things that Penelope Russianoff or Gloria Arenson or Milton Cudney had to say about breaking emotional bad habits, emotional healing and freeing oneself from self-defeating behaviours. She had some vague idea that either her parents were in cahoots with one another (despite the fact they'd pretty much vowed to give each other the silent treatment) or her father was longing so much for the company of her mother, he was buying a bunch of books that had to do with her occupation. Both of the possibilities upset her, so she just read every single one of the books without question.

She didn't really cry about anything anymore; she was past the point of crying about every little thing that upset her. It no longer bothered her that she was alone on weekend nights—the idea of any kind of sexual activity threw her back to the parking lot. She was hesitant to even touch her own body, uncomfortable in her skin, and whenever she caught herself in the mirror, she'd zero in immediately to that one blemish on her body where the knife had pressed her so harshly. After awhile, she spun around her full-length mirror in her room, threw a sheet over it and from that point on just used the little hand-mirror she'd inherited from her father's mother for putting on her makeup and do her hair.

When Christmas came around, she became the centre of a fiery debate as to where she'd spend the holiday. Her father insisted that it was too soon, that she didn't need to be leaving the state, especially when she already had an intense fear of flying sparked by 9/11 and the fact that her grandfather had died in a private plane crash when she was six. She sat in the TV room of her father's house listening to her father fighting on the phone with her mother bringing up every sordid detail of her fears and the happenings of the last three years during which Carol was living in Dallas. All she did was turn up the TV to cover their fight and sunk into the chair, savouring in scent of her father's cologne, and she rested.

Lisa and Jackson's Christmas, just like their New Years, was spent twenty minutes apart and alone.

Lisa watched _A Christmas Story_ in her Christmas tree-covered flannel pyjama pants, mouthing the words along with the actors on the screen as she ate the cookie dough she'd bought to make happy Christmas cookies for all of her neighbours. That, of course, was before her neighbours all disappeared to their own families' houses for the holidays and she was left basically alone in the building of mostly twenty-something singles. Sure, there was the guy on the bottom floor with the potted wire clothes hanger sitting outside of his front door, but no one ever talked to him. The rumour was that he had his entire ceiling covered with tin foil, and as Lisa sat there eating the dough and drinking from the container of low-fat eggnog, she wondered if she'd end up like him, but perhaps with a bunch of cats. In response, the cat she'd received from her father for her birthday jumped up in her lap and Lisa scratched her soft head with a sigh.

Jackson had never really celebrated Christmas, so it was nothing but another day for him. When he woke up at four in the afternoon, he looked to the building across from his to see happy blinking lights, a jolly family party, and the remains of wrapped gifts in the windows. With a grumble, he turned his back to the gaiety before wandering out of the bedroom to make some eggnog flavoured coffee, a little gift from his housekeeper for the holidays, and mused over perhaps buying himself a Russian wife before he completely woke up and realised how stupid that idea was. All he needed in his life was another woman from Lyna's region. As he took his first sip of coffee, he decided that if he really did become the head of the organisation, he'd take a Thai-bought bride, but she'd live in a different house. Yeah, that made sense, he thought as he made his way to the couch, stubbing his toe on the way before sitting down and turning on _A Christmas Story_. He always liked it when that kid thought he'd shot his eye out, which Dr Greene found vaguely ironic when he told him. After all, if anyone were going to shoot his eye out by aiming across a yard, it would be Jackson.

'Oh, life is like that. Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.'

As Jackson smiled into his coffee cup, Lisa picked up Alfie and squeezed the cat to her chest, trying to convince herself that the unthinkable had already occurred and it wasn't going to happen ever again.

---

In the midst of the Orange Revolution, Heorhiy Kyrpa was killed and it was ruled a suicide as he'd supported the now-ousted Prime Minister Yanukovych. Lyna, who already had an apartment in Kiev, simply faded into the background after her assignment was finished, and both she and Jackson quickly received their hefty salaries deposited directly into their Swiss bank accounts. With the management pay, Jackson bought the Audi he'd promised himself back in Oslo and spent a couple of days driving around like a madman in the wee hours of the morning. On New Years, he found himself back at the Lux Atlantic, spending his holiday drinking at the bar and watching the lovely Miss Reisert who stood dutifully behind the counter in her proper white dress and gold nametag. He briefly wondered why she'd be working on that day instead of partying, but quickly forgot about it once he remembered that at times, he'd taken a few terribly scheduled assignments to get a little extra spending money, and considering that her salary would be immensely less than his, he figured she needed the extra hours. Besides, she looked happy enough.

He enjoyed watching her that night but never thought about actually approaching her. By the next morning, he was back to work planning the July assassination of Ihab al-Sherif in his office at the Miami headquarters and Lisa was back to her normal and relatively dull life.

January and February were spent on little jobs: someone who wanted to off his wife, a person who wanted to have a business rival quietly disposed of, a few small robberies of jewels and art, and a couple of actual private investigator assignments. People came to his office—whether they were the actual people paying for the jobs or just representatives, he didn't care—and were led in by his secretary. Once the door was locked, the place was soundproof and he could discuss expectations and the society rules of engagement. From the computer on his desk, he could access the organisation mainframe in Switzerland and crosscheck every potential customer for information like previous assignments with them, whether they were wanted for any crime, et cetera. There were actually a couple of times in his years at the agency where when he gathered someone's picture from the camera in the corner of the office, it was marked in the database so he had to have his secretary come in immediately to kill the person. That, of course, was why he always kept a handkerchief in his suit pocket. It would be slightly socially unacceptable to walk around with blood and brain matter smattered over one's face.

On the last day of February, Jackson received a frantic call from Switzerland.

'We need you on the next flight to Geneva,' said Poulain's secretary, a Pointee from Madagascar named Anaïs. 'I'll send you the information now, but I would recommend you get your personal assistant on the phone to go ahead and buy your airline tickets. Monsieur Poulain expects you by tomorrow morning.'

Jackson looked at his watch. 'The last flight to Geneva probably leaves here in three or four hours.'

'Then I suggest you be quick,' she said quickly, and then hung up the phone.

'Dammit,' hissed Jackson, who was looking forward to a nice evening at home after having to have a possible customer killed. Dialling the phone, he pinched the bridge of his nose as the line connected. 'Hey, Greg, it's Jackson. Listen, I need you to get on this right now. I need to be in Geneva by tomorrow morning for a meeting with Poulain. No, no, if I'd known earlier, I would have told you earlier. I just got the call from Anaïs and she says it's extremely urgent; just get what you can.'

Both of them knew that it was going to be incredibly pricy to get on that flight, but neither dwelled on it too much. As the fax started streaming in from Geneva, Jackson packed the overnight bag that he kept in the office for occasions such as this. He grabbed up the long fax from the printer and put it in the outside of his bag before looking back at the dead man in the chair in front of his desk. He walked over and pushed the call button for his secretary.

'Merit?'

'Yes, sir?' came her voice over the intercom.

'I'll be out of the office for the next few days,' he said, looking about the room with his mouth open a bit and his hands propped on the desk. 'I have business to deal with on the Continent.'

'Of course, sir.'

He thought for a moment. 'Oh, and Merit?'

'Yes, Mr Rippner?'

'I need you to take care of straightening my office.'

There was a pause of understanding before she spoke with a little bit of amusement in her voice. 'I'll take care of that immediately, sir.'

---

'Jackson, come in.'

Jackson strode into the boardroom confidently, not bothering to look at anyone but Poulain. The heads had gathered from around the globe: Marek Osikowicz, Polish leader of the European Office; Saeng Chaiyasan, Thai director of the Asian Office; Ghodsi Pedram of the Middle East Office, who had warned the Organisation about 11 September; Abioye Oshodi, Benin-born head of the North African Office; Yasini Machogu, Zimbabwe-based leader of the South African Office; Cristobal Valencia, Chilean head of the South American Office; Richard Crome of the Australian Office; and lastly Melanie Watson of the North American Office—their pictures were in the entry hall of the head office in Geneva, and one of his first assignments in the society was to learn all of their names. He couldn't understand why this was considered important enough to have everyone there—it seemed like a very cut-and-dry assassination, but there was something slightly off about it. He gave Poulain a look that the older man apparently decoded as 'confusion.'

'This meeting was already called before this problem came up,' Poulain said quickly, motioning to the people around him. 'Although it is of great concern to us.'

'You didn't tell me everything,' insinuated Jackson as he took a seat between Poulain, who was at the head of the table, and Chaiyasan, who was sitting to Poulain's right. 'Why are we being called in to cover up the murder of Georgiy Gongadze?'

Poulain looked to Osikowicz, who was holding a hand up to his mouth, his lips pressed to the junction of the thumb and pointer finger. They exchanged an odd look before Poulain nodded and the Polish man cleared his throat. Jackson looked over at him.

'Five years ago, we received a request to participate in the Gongadze affair directly from the Ukrainian government. It was a rush assignment that was originally intended to be a political kidnapping rather than murder, so the European council decided that the best course of action would be to send a team of advisors rather than have an entire plan already dictated,' said the man, who apparently used his hands a little too much when speaking. 'The team was connected to the Interior Ministry and consisted completely of Ukrainian nationals that work within the organisation.'

The man paused long enough that Jackson was convinced he was finished. 'Why wasn't I included in this? That murder was an absolutely huge international affair and would have looked fabulous on my résumé.'

He glared harshly at Poulain, who gave him a look much like one that a man would give an insolent dog. One-on-one, just the look would silence the younger man, but here in front of the board, he was headstrong. Sitting up straighter, he continued the glare with his hands clamped together as he leaned on the tabletop, his eyebrows raised and he obviously expected an answer, but Poulain ignored him with a jerk of his head to Osikowicz. The man continued.

'One of the men we worked with has a plea bargain with the new government to tell about our involvement in the murder to get off of his jail time,' said Osikowicz, again putting his hand up to his mouth. 'We need to have him taken care of immediately but extremely quietly.'

'That's not a problem. I already have everything planned out,' Jackson replied haughtily. 'But I don't do my own kills, you know that.'

'Why is that?' asked Chaiyasan, one of the two heads that Jackson hadn't worked under.

'Jackson is a very poor shot,' Poulain replied pointedly and the woman closed her mouth, folding her hands in her lap demurely as Jackson pinched his lips a little, not allowing Poulain to see it.

'Why am I in front of the board?' Jackson asked suddenly, looking directly at Poulain. 'Could we not have discussed this matter alone?'

There was an awkward shifting by all members of the board at hearing Jackson talking back to the patron.

'Well, Jackson,' Poulain started, opening a leather folder in front of him. 'As you know, my eighty-fifth birthday is coming up, and since the... incident involving my son ten years ago, there has been no one in line to take over the organisation. Now, I'm sure you've heard from many people that you're being groomed to take over, and that's the truth. Since you first began speaking with Dr Greene so many years ago, we've been paying careful watch to your development as an employee and alexithymic individual through assignment endurance, chemical mental encouragement, and relationship tampering. I must say, we've all been quite pleased.'

There was a general murmur of assent in the room.

Now was Jackson's turn to shift. 'I'm not really sure if I'm the correct choice—'

'You have no say in the matter,' Poulain replied very sharply. 'For nearly twenty years, we've been pouring money into you for schooling and a very comfortable living. As an orphan, you have no one that you have to answer to, no one who depends on you. In other words, you're the perfect candidate.'

'And if I end up having a family?'

Poulain laughed loudly. 'Jackson, you'll never have a family. You're far too egotistical and two-faced.'

There was an uncomfortable few minutes of silence as the board members opened identical leather folders and signed the papers inside. Jackson looked over to Chaiyasan's copy, but it was written in her native Thai, so he couldn't read what she was signing. He looked at Poulain as the old man stood and motioned in his barrister, who had been waiting outside the glass doors. He walked in and stood beside Poulain as the board members passed up their consent forms. The lawyer looked over the pile of papers, fingering through them before setting them in his briefcase and locking it.

'Then, to confirm it, all who approve the placement of Jackson Rippner to the second-in-command of _La société mondiale des investigateurs privés_, please say aye,' said the man, looking intently at the board.

One by one, each board member submitted his or her vocal vote and then the lawyer had Poulain sign a new will that he had prepared. After blotting his signature, the patron pushed the thick document over to Jackson, raising his eyebrows. He held the middle of the pen aloft and Jackson took it before pouring over the contents of the document.

'There's nothing important to read,' Poulain said, pushing Jackson's hand aside and flipping to the final page. 'Sign the document.'

'I just don't understand why—'

_'Do ut des_,' interrupted Poulain, and Jackson looked at him, slightly startled. 'I give that you may give.'

After licking his lips a little, Jackson tapped the tip of the pen to the paper and signed it with a flourish. The board applauded politely and the European and North African ambassadors looked at each other quickly before Oshodi looked over at the Middle Eastern ambassador, Pedram. She smiled a bit at the North African woman before raising her hands higher and looking at Poulain and Jackson. None of the three were fond of the younger man—Oshodi and Osikowicz had dealt with Jackson after his two major accidents in the organisation and didn't hold him in very high esteem because of his self-righteousness. Since the meeting had been planned, the three of them had been in contact with one another, completely bypassing the other regions for this. Pedram had been informed that Jackson would be working in her region for his next big assignment, so they decided that with the timing of everything, and the very hush-hush information that Poulain was in for a large amount of medical tests, would call for quick execution of a plan to get rid of Jackson Rippner.

There was no interest in killing him—after all, there would be blame placed on Pedram if something happened in her arena—but all of them knew that Jackson liked to keep his assignments personal. If he was in charge of something, he wanted no one to ever know who did it and no one to take responsibility. So, the plan was for Pedram to request that Jackson take the assassination, which had secretly been funded by an associate of Oshodi's, and for the terrorist network Al Qaeda to take responsibility. At a party to celebrate Poulain's 80th birthday a few years ago, a very intoxicated Jackson had gone on a huge rant about Al Qaeda's policies and by post September 11th, pretty much everyone knew that the man had absolute abhorrence for the terrorist organisation. Therefore, if Jackson's hit were to be claimed by these terrorists, the triad of ambassadors thought that there was a good chance that the already touchy Jackson would be pushed enough to quit the organisation.

So as the triumvirate plotted, the others clapped and the lawyer notarised the new will, Jackson became the legal son of Matthias Poulain and the next head of the world-famous _Société mondiale des investigateurs privés_.


	22. 7 July 2005

A/N: Only one more chapter after this one! And the replacement for Heir Apparent is full of the crazy.

---

Rather than returning to Miami, Jackson just moved to his Berlin apartment and settled in again as Karl Müller. His days were spent being a normal Berliner: buying groceries at the Kaiser on the next block, visiting friends in the bar near the Grunewald S-Bahn station, climbing the rubble mountain outside of the Grunewald to look down at the city lights at night, shopping at KaDeWe, et cetera. His evenings, however, were spent watching reruns of German-language X-Files episodes as he planned the kidnapping and killing of Ihab al-Sherif. The plans were submitted to Poulain and then passed on to Pedram by late June. By the first day of July, Jackson had the names of his team-members and his plane tickets to Baghdad.

The next day, Jackson boarded a plane to Kuwait. Once there, he took the identity of a soldier and flew into Baghdad as the navigator of a jet. In Baghdad, he disappeared into the darkness of the city to meet up with his team, which consisted of two assassins, a former policewoman who was a professional at keeping hostages at bay, and surprisingly, Pedram. Jackson hadn't expected her (she certainly wasn't on his list) but thought it might be a test, so he didn't say a thing, just as Pedram hoped. They all settled in to their hotel and took shifts watching the area where al-Sherif was known to buy his daily newspaper. Each car that pulled up made the person on guard perk up, but it wasn't until the sun had long since risen that Pedram got to her feet and the entire team dispersed. They hid in their assigned places as one of the assassins got the getaway car and within minutes, al-Sherif had exited his own car and was shoved into theirs, his newspaper dropped, forgotten, on the dusty ground.

Jackson watched them from his hotel window as they drove away; he was completely unaware that every person in his group was in on the plan to sour the organisation for the new second-in-command. They drove the car away from the hotel and out of the city limits, one of the assassins watching in case Jackson decided to tail them. Far off, on the border of Iran and Iraq, they delivered the now-dead man to a courier, who would assure his shipment to Afghanistan, where he would bring al-Sherif to Al-Qaeda, who would surely announce that they'd been the planners and executors of the entire kidnapping. As they delivered the body, Jackson made his way towards Turkey in a car with a bunch of Iraqi civilians going to northern Iraq. That night, on foot, he made it to his rendezvous point in the Turkish city of Hakkari and was whisked off to Cyprus to await the report from his team. By two days later, he received the expected telegram and left Nicosia, flying back to Berlin to await instructions from Poulain, which came on the 6th.

With the okay to enjoy a vacation, Jackson took the next flight from Berlin to London. A night of hard partying and drinking the night before left him in a sleepy stupor, so he slept on the entire flight and promptly dropped off when he got on the Tube. He missed the announcement for Russell Square and every stop thereafter all the way to Cockfosters _and_ the return trip. At Caledonian Road, a man jostled into him roughly in his preparations for alighting the train and Jackson was jarred awake, rubbing his eyes and trying to remember how much longer he had to be on the train. After studying the map above his head, he pulled out the _USA Today European Edition_ and read over the same information he'd heard on the BBC World News that morning as he packed in Berlin. The train entered the famous Kings Cross station and stopped to welcome aboard a whole new slew of passengers. A man caught Jackson's eye, but he didn't let it concern him too much—after all, he was supposed to be on vacation. Shaking the newspaper, he went back to reading as the train began its plunge into the tunnels of the subway once more.

What happened next was completely unexpected. One moment, Jackson was watching the man he recognised out of the corner of his eye as the younger man fiddled with a rucksack in his hand through the back window of the car ahead of Jackson's, and the next he was plunged into darkness and thrown onto the ground, followed closely by the new metal briefcase he'd picked up a few months before. It cracked onto his head, and although his body screamed for him to pass out, he didn't let it happen. He groaned and looked slowly around at the chaos. There were people lying all around him, and if he was seeing properly through his rapidly swelling eye, there were several dead and incredibly bloody people at the end of the car near where the man had been standing fiddling with his rucksack. The stunned passengers around him were starting to move and moaning but Jackson was more interested in the movement outside of the windows of the car.

Groaning, Jackson sat up and slowly got to his feet, taking his briefcase with him. He held on to the bars of the overhead and closed his eyes, trying to adjust to the head-rush before moving out of the Underground car, stumbling over debris as he yelled after the people he'd seen through the window.

'Oy!' he screamed, and his voice, now coated in a thick Irish accent, jarred terribly in his throbbing head, but the people looked back at him. 'Is this the way to Russell Square?'

'Aye,' replied an Indian woman in a soot-covered business suit, her hair falling out of the bun at the base of her head.

Jackson pressed a hand to the dirty tunnel wall and slowly made his way to the two people. 'I need to get to the station.'

'So do we,' replied the man in a heavy Yorkshire accent as the woman wove her arm under Jackson's, supporting him. 'Bugger me, what carriage were you in?'

'The one right behind the one that exploded,' said Jackson breathlessly, tired from the exertion. 'I saw the man who did it.'

'The _man_ who did it?' asked the man, gaping.

'This was caused by a _man_?' said the woman as they started walking towards the station. 'The scuffers'll probably want to talk to you.'

It took Jackson a moment to realise that she was talking about the cops. He tensed a little against her and started trying to figure out how he'd get out of talking to the police about the person he'd seen. What would be his explanation for knowing the man? The truth was that he had been one of the men who Jackson had seen on a watch-list of possible terrorists that was given to all of the organisation operatives. What about that man would have necessarily drawn Jackson's attention to him? He was any normal 19-year-old riding on the Tube on a weekday fiddling with his rucksack to find his iPod or something. Since Jackson woke up around Caledonian Road, he'd seen at least eight other people doing the exact same thing. He certainly didn't want to lie to the police, but he didn't want to be telling the truth either. He'd much prefer to just not speak to them at all.

There was something incredibly eerie about the unused tunnel. Usually there would be the woosh of trains and the creaking of rails in a Tube tunnel, but now there was an uncomfortable silence with the undertones of moaning and the occasional scream reflecting off of the close walls. There was sometimes a clang or thud as pieces of the ceiling around the train fell, but these sounds were dulled by both the thick smoke and the unending pounding in Jackson's ears. The emergency lights overhead were obscured by smoke and the woman he leaned on kept reminding him to stay off of the tracks because she had no idea if they were live or not. It seemed like forever before they made it into to clear, bright station, terrifying the already shaking people on the platform, who rushed over to help them out of the track pit.

'What… what happened?' stammered a young American woman wearing the typical college ensemble of jeans and a t-shirt with a messenger bag strapped across her chest. 'We heard a loud bang.'

'There was an explosion,' Jackson replied quickly, handing his briefcase to her before being helped onto the platform by a couple of men. 'There are people injured and dead. You need to alert the stationmaster.'

'He's already gone to get help,' she said to him, handing him back his briefcase.

The conversation ended when another group of soot-covered survivors appeared in the fluorescent light. Two of them were carrying incredibly bloody people who had tears creating greyish streaks down their cheeks; one of them was biting the coat of the man carrying her. Jackson stepped back and slumped down on a bench, collecting his thoughts as he took off the ripped suit jacket he was wearing and wiped off his face with the mostly clean lining. With the blood and soot cleared away, he was able to look with his good eye at his dirty and rent pants and noticed that he had a missing shoe—how he hadn't noticed it before, he had no idea. His big toe was poking through a hole in his sock, so he wiggled it just to be sure there wasn't a huge amount of damage on his leg.

A man who'd been standing to the side talking on his mobile came over and slumped down next to Jackson. 'I just got a call from me girlfriend. She was on the Tube near Liverpool Street and said that there was an explosion there too. The place is in havoc, but the bobbies are telling people that it was caused by a power surge.'

Jackson stared at the other man, dumbfounded. 'A power surge? Come on.'

'You don't think it was a power surge?' asked the man, looking at Jackson. 'What was it like down there?'

'It was a suicide bombing,' Jackson replied, giving the man a snarky look. 'People are dead and dying down in that train.'

The man tensed and nearly stood. 'Come on, then, we need to gather a group and go help them.'

'No,' Jackson said sharply. 'The air down there is thick enough to be cut by a knife. More people will get hurt trying to go in there before the rescue personnel than is worth it.'

The man seemed distraught by Jackson's disconnect from the situation. 'Do you not care at all about the people who are suffering—'

'No, I don't care about them,' he said darkly, raising his eyebrows.

With a disapproving look, the man stood and walked away to help the people off of the tracks. There was the sound of sirens screaming from the street and echoing from the tile walls of the station, so Jackson grabbed his briefcase and went towards the stairs. Looking ahead, he could see a mass of people who had been moved away from the platform and spread themselves through the hallway and ticketing area. He mingled with them, trying his best to look like someone who had been waiting rather than someone who'd been part of the blast. The rescue workers didn't even give him a second glance as they stormed down to the tracks to begin their operations, and after a few minutes, Jackson was being ushered out with the other survivors and waiting commuters.

At street-level, he was able to lose himself in the crowds of people who had gathered before making a beeline for his hotel. In the lobby, the workers were panicky about his appearance as he checked in, but Jackson was more concerned with the muted television in the hotel bar that had a picture of al-Sherif on it. He walked over to the bar, leaning heavily on it.

'Can... can you please turn that up?' he murmured to the barkeep.

The man turned it up and Jackson listened to the tape. 'Al-Qaeda announced today that they orchestrated the abduction and assassination of Ihab al-Sherif, an Egyptian official stationed in Baghdad, Iraq.'

Without even listening to the rest of the report, a steamed Jackson stomped away from the bar and to the lift, pulling out his cell phone and grumbling to himself. Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda, it was always Al-Qaeda! There was less and less use for trained assassins and managers because any yahoo could strap a bomb to himself and detonate the entire surrounding area and _that_ terrified people more than a _thousand_ political assassinations could. Any person at any time could be killed in a terrible explosion; there was no finesse anymore. No person sitting up in a tower with a sniper's gun, picking out the one person in the crowd to shoot and ignoring all the rest. True, he'd worked to do some of the Algerian massacres, but in the long run, he'd only chosen locations and arranged for Lyna to be smuggled into the country for aid. Since September 11th, he'd been more and more concerned for his own safety in day-to-day activities and had refused participation in any job that required the downing of planes, use of bombs or the killing of any group of people. There were murmurs that he'd grown soft, but because Poulain himself had never participated in a group murder, there was nothing much they could say—now that he was second-in-command, there was absolute silence on the matter.

The doors slid open and he pressed the speed-dial on his phone. When he placed it to his ear, however, there was a circuits-busy tone. He grumbled and got into his room, flinging the briefcase on the bed and angrily picking up the phone from the side-table. He dialled Poulain's number and the phone rang.

_'L'office de Monsieur Poulain, c'est Anaïs._'

_'Pourrais-je parler à Monsieur Poulain?_'

_'Qui est à l'appareil?_'

'_C'est _Rippner.'

_'Ne quittez pas, je vous le passe_.'

'_Merci_.'

The hold music started, a Chopin piece, and Jackson pressed the speakerphone button. He could feel blood spilling down his face and went to the bathroom, sighing as he looked at himself in the mirror. A thick trickle of blood came out of the matted mess of his hair, falling down his forehead and past his nose, beside his lips and under his chin. His soot-smudged shirt had blood soaked into the collar, and before he had time to clean, Poulain's voice came over the speaker.

_'Ouais, mon fils?_' Poulain said. 'I've just heard about the London bombings—are you all right?'

He walked out and lay down on the bed next to the phone. 'Yes, I'm all right... I was in one of the trains that was hit, but I escaped with a bad bump on the head and some minor blast injuries.'

'Did you call to inform me of this?' Poulain asked, and Jackson could hear him turn down the television in his office. 'Or is there something else on your mind?'

'You read me like a book, _monsieur_,' Jackson replied. 'I'm calling to submit my resignation.'

---

Ghodsi Pedram sat in her Damascus office biting the end of a pen as she looked over the newest requests for managers and their assassins. She was working out the placement of a manager for a massacre in Iraq when her phone rang.

'Pedram.'

'It's done.'

'Good.'

With that short conversation, she smiled and went back to her work. Jackson Rippner was dead, the victim of a random terrorist bombing in London, and there was only a negligible chance that she or her associates would be implicated. If things had gone as she planned, it would be difficult to even identify his body. She was nearly ecstatic—with Jackson out of the way, the _de facto_ inheritor of the organisation would be Philip Greene, who, with his alliances, would be able to place the organisation at the forefront of the current political scene; in other words, he'd be able to make the organisation a cover company for terrorist groups, which would increase their jobs immensely. When her phone rang again, however, Pedram looked at it warily.

'Pedram.'

'Ghodsi, it's Matthias.'

'Oh, sir, I'm sorry to hear about your loss!' she gushed.

'My loss?'

'I know that Jackson was in London today, and one of my associates in the city said that she saw him at King's Cross on the way to her job this morning.'

'Oh,' Poulain replied with a light laugh. 'My boy escaped with just some minor injuries, which is impressive, considering he was in the carriage right behind the one that exploded!'

Pedram froze. The bomber had ridden the wrong carriage.

'Anyway, I gave the boy that new American job that came across my desk this morning. The purchaser is a man in your region, so I assume you also have the request?'

She swallowed to whet her mouth. 'Ye-yes, the Deputy Director of Homeland Security?'

'That's the one,' the man replied. 'Jackson will be working on that one because I know he already knows the Miami area quite well, and I want his last job with us to be an easy one. Shall you arrange the meeting between Jackson and the employer, or would you prefer I do it?'

'I'll take care of it,' she replied smoothly, opening the file he was speaking of. 'The purchaser is actually in the London area right now, so I'll call him immediately. Thank you very much for keeping me abreast of this situation, sir. I'm relieved that Mr Rippner wasn't hurt.'

After hanging up the phone, she cursed loudly and then called Hassan Nasrallah to arrange the meeting between Jackson and him, all the while considering which members she could work with to move on to plan B of ridding the organisation of Jackson Rippner. It wasn't until after she picked the time and place of the meeting that she realised Poulain had told her that Jackson was retiring.


	23. Late August 2005

A/N: Posting this a day early. I don't know if any of you remember the kitten I saved last year around Christmas, Jackson, but yesterday we took him to the vet because he'd been lethargic and depressed. At first, Dr Bush thought it was because he had an inflamed vertebral disk, but after doing some blood tests, he determined that Jackson is finally starting to show symptoms of his leukaemia, which was diagnosed late last year. Going by his blood work, Jackson's in stage five of FeLV. He stayed at the vet last night to receive fluids and antibiotics, and he might be getting a blood transfusion within the next couple of days to try to elevate his erythrocyte count.

Please keep him in your thoughts. He's very important to me, perhaps the most important being in the entire world, and having him like this is absolutely killing me inside.

---

Three weeks later, Jackson was settling in his car for another night of watching Lisa Reisert. Going into the assignment, he had a completely different picture of her. She seemed like such a bubbly woman when he'd met her less than three years earlier but now she was, quite frankly, kind of a bore, something that he found vaguely alluring. There was something mysterious about the woman, something that she didn't let anyone see. Whereas before she was relatively transparent, now the only thing that was transparent to him was her smile. She smiled all the time with other people, but he could see right past it when no one else seemed to. He didn't like to see her like that—it was like she was lying all the time, putting up this façade to hide her real self, and it enraged him. Every time he watched her at work, he wanted nothing more than to wring her pretty neck.

Of one thing he was certain, however, and it was that to get to her, he'd have to go through her father. She couldn't be allured by pretty men, as was apparent by the guys who tried to pick her up at her normal bar every time she went, so he couldn't fall back on his old tricks to get a woman to do something for him. She liked men defending women, which was apparent every time the bartender would swat some guy away from an overly drunk woman at the bar. Whenever she saw him do that, she'd leave him a tip worth more than the price of the Seabreeze she'd consumed. She was always up for conversation but also always alert as though the person would jump out and bite her at any time. Whenever given an invitation to do something or go somewhere by a man she had just met a few hours earlier, she always found a way to weasel out of it.

By the end of the sixth week, he had a perfect plan in his head. He'd take her when she was leaving work because no one ever checked up on her until the next morning when she came into the hotel. Taking her back to his office at the Miami headquarters, he'd tie her up and announce that Ian was waiting outside of her father's house with his weapons then present her with the current photos of the outside of the house streaming from Ian's laptop then drop her father's wallet in her lap. A flip of a switch and her father would appear on the screen, watched over by a small camera implanted in his living room, sitting there quietly doing whatever he decided to do that night, most likely watching television and eating leftovers as he seemed to do every night. After she'd collected herself, he'd have her call the hotel, arrange the room change, and then after all was done, he'd inject her with Ativan and lay her out on the couch of his office.

This was for his own pleasure, because he liked to watch her sleep.

Once the deed was done, she'd be thrown into the ocean. If she lived, fine. If she died, that was how it had to be. Something about her just wanted to be sure that if she was going to die, he wanted to do it, because he didn't want anyone else to touch her but himself. He'd have preferred strangling her to watch her reaction, but for safety purposes, a simple drowning was much more plausible. At least that way, he reasoned, there wouldn't be any bruises on that flawless skin.

Ian expressed concern about the plan a week before they were going to put it into effect. 'Jackson, are you sure you haven't come a little too close to the target?'

'What are you talking about?' Jackson asked, flicking the ash off the tip of his cigarette as the two stood on the balcony of Jackson's condo after going over files. 'She's just a pretty and mysterious girl. I've fucked tonnes of them.'

Usually Ian was a good dog, but his concern for Jackson leapt over his obedience. 'Your plan focuses far too much on this woman. You're practically stalking her but you should just be information-gathering for a job.'

In a flurry, Jackson turned and pressed his cigarette to Ian's neck before slamming the older man into the sliding glass doors. 'How I do my job is none of your business, dog.'

Ian shoved him away and then adjusted his glasses. 'Don't let the emotions you have associated with her get in the way of completing this. If you get upset by her, you're going to fail, and you're going to fail miserably.'

Before Jackson had another chance to attack him, Ian made his way through the door and to the elevator, disappearing behind the doors as an angry Jackson crossed the room and banged on the metal. Turning back around, he looked at the pictures of Lisa at the park, playing with her cat, taking her cat to the vet, talking on her cell phone in her car, et cetera. After looking at his favourite, a photograph of her talking on the phone with her grandmother with a broad, honest smile and a hand running through her hair, he grabbed his coat and called the elevator. He had to see her again.

---

The plan completely fell to shit three days before it was to be put into effect. On that day, Jackson had fallen asleep in his office chair, his head by the computer screen watching Lisa sleeping, and was jarred awake by the phone ringing on his desk and next to Lisa's bed. They sat up almost simultaneously, reaching for the phones. Jackson pressed a button and the sounds of the conversation filled his office.

'Hello?' Lisa asked in a sleep-laden voice.

'Lisa, honey, it's Mom,' said her mother, who had obviously been crying.

'Mom, what's wrong?' asked Lisa, suddenly alert.

There was a long pause. 'Grandma died, honey.'

The hand that wasn't holding the phone flew to Lisa's mouth and she quickly started crying for the first time in what seemed like forever. Jackson watched the grainy representation of Lisa on his screen and found another thing he liked about her—she made a wonderful face when she cried. Those eyebrows arched a certain way, her eyes became clearer and her cheeks reddened.

'When... when's the service?'

Jackson froze.

'The 26th.'

'In Dallas?'

'Of course, honey. Grandma wouldn't want to be buried anywhere else now, would she?'

'Of course not,' Lisa said in a strained voice, reaching over to turn on her nightstand light. She picked up a pen and took a few notes. 'What time, Mom?'

'The funeral's at noon and we'll have a gathering at my house afterwards. If you'd like, you can stay at my house that—'

'No, Mom, I have to be back here on the 27th. We have a VIP coming from Washington and I'll need to be here for it. I'll just take the red-eye back to Miami, it's all right.'

'I love you, sweetheart. I'll see you on Friday.'

'Love you too, Mom.'

After she hung up the phone, she disappeared into her living room to make flight arrangements, but Jackson was already one step ahead of her. The computer screen flashed up her own so that he was able to watch what flight and seat she was on. He got Greg on the line and he, in turn, had their contact at Fresh Air on the line so that they could arrange everything perfectly. Once she was placed in row 18, Jackson was placed in the same row, seated right next to her. The seat had an Airfone and she would be pressed right to the window so there was less chance for her to escape. Perhaps she would be stereotypical and feel her mortality because of her grandmother's death and therefore be more willing to help make everything go to plan.

'Jackson, you'll be leaving tomorrow morning to go get a feeling for the airport. I've made reservations for you at a hotel adjacent to the airport; if Ian needs to send you anything, it'll be fast and easy because of the airport being there. We probably won't be speaking again, so it's been good working for you over the last few years.'

'You've been a great help, Greg.'

With that simple, unemotional good-by, the two hung up for what Jackson hoped would be the last time.

---

Lisa spent her Friday in numb shock. The death had definitely broadsided her, and as she sat in the church beside her mother staring at the casket, it seemed like everything was just a bad dream. No one had expected Henrietta's death—it had been very sudden and her mother had known at that ungodly hour only because Duke had called her immediately. As they drove to the gravesite, she just stared out the window at the heavy rain. She never cried in front of the family, not even when they lowered her grandmother's body into the wet earth.

After the funeral, the party went to Carol's house to express their condolences and reminisce. Lisa, on the other hand, spent the entire afternoon in the kitchen watching the guests as she drank glass after glass of Almaden Burgundy, occasionally interrupted by people she didn't know who told her over and over again how wonderful her grandmother was and how much she must miss her. And she did miss her, that was true, but she didn't need everyone reminding her of her loss. So she drank some more.

Jackson's day started very early. He was growing increasingly worried that Ian wouldn't be able to filch Reisert's wallet, so he alleviated the worry by studying the blueprints and photos he'd accrued over the last few weeks. Finally, by early evening, the phone rang and a man at the front desk told Jackson that he had a package and that he'd be sending an employee up to deliver it to him. When it was placed in his hands, a weight dropped off of his shoulders. Standing by the bed, he ripped open the envelope and looked at the monogrammed leather for a moment before opening it and dumping all of Reisert's credit cards. He stared at the picture of a younger Lisa for a moment before closing it and looking at the initials again. Crossing the room to the desk, he replaced the contents with his own credit cards and Florida identification. That finished, he packed up all of his reference material on the Lux Atlantic and headed off to the airport. He wasn't sure when Lisa would actually arrive, that was dependant on when the gathering dispersed, but when she got there, he wanted to be ready.

---

He sat on a bench looking towards the outside for a few hours, glancing down at his watch nervously as the departure time crept closer and closer. Every taxi that arrived at the airport made him perk up, but when middle-aged housewives and self-righteous businessmen alighted rather than the petite hotel manager, he just grew more and more angry. It was about ten minutes before the scheduled departure when he saw her get out of a taxi talking on her cell phone and he stood, following a good forty feet behind her as she checked for the new departure time and headed off to the check-in. By the time he reached her, however, she had already crammed the ear-buds of her iPod into her ears and wasn't paying any attention to anyone around her. By her nervousness, Jackson was able to detect that she was terrified of flying, and that just made his job all the easier.

Pretending to read the _USA Today_, he stood right behind her, taking in the scent of her perfume and the slight aura of cheap wine. She was reading a self-help book; he'd noticed that that was basically all she kept on the shelves in her living room, but he had no idea why a young woman like her would feel such a need to 'transform' herself. Honestly, when he'd seen her in earlier years, he'd never have picked her as the self-help book type, especially since she didn't seem very close to her psychiatrist mother. He knew something had happened to her but had absolutely no clue what it was. Whatever happened, she never talked about it and no one ever mentioned it. Occasionally, when he watched her sleep, he would catch a glimpse of a scar on her chest, but he couldn't see enough of it to determine how old the scar was, so he didn't know if it was just a field hockey injury or something else.

She bumped into the woman in front of her and apologised profusely without removing her headphones. When the woman started talking, however, she removed them and started up a conversation with her about that damn Dr Phil. Jackson just kept fake-reading his paper as she offered up the book to the older woman. He was pleased to see that after the exchange, Lisa didn't bother putting her headphones back in her ears; after all, she was second in line. When a man next to them started up a fight with one of the ticketing agents, Jackson lowered his paper with a mental grin, knowing that this was the perfect opportunity to grab Lisa's attention. Before he was able to say anything, however, she spoke.

'Sir, please don't make her do that. She's doing the best she can.'

Jackson looked at her darkly.

'I don't think I was talking to you,' said the man.

'No, I realise that—'

Despite the glare that Jackson was giving him, the man continued. 'Listen, I'm just trying—'

Jackson had had enough of this guy's bullshit. No one was going to talk to Lisa that way. 'Please, sir, um... she is the only one standing between us getting out of here at all and total anarchy.'

'Yeah, but she's not the one—'

His left hand flew out and grabbed the man's wrist. 'She's exhausted, she's worked eighteen hours straight, and she suspects we all hate her just as much as you do. So what do you say we give her a break? Let her get back to her job, which I'm guessing is a lot more thankless than yours.'

One look into his icy eyes, and the man lost the fight. '... this airline sucks.'

Lisa looked back at him and without thinking, he gave her a face and she turned around. He watched her closely as she ran to give the old woman's umbrella back to her, willing her to speak to him. He was rewarded as soon as she took her place back in line. The old woman thanked him first, and Lisa took off from that.

'Yeah, thank you,' she said quickly, looking back down at her bags.

'Oh, not at all. I was just backup,' he said, leaning closer to her. 'You got the ball rolling.'

She smiled. 'Yeah, reflex I guess.'

'Why is that?' he asked, a British accent slipping through his words for whatever reason; this was going extremely well.

'Well...' she started, looking up at him. 'I work in a hotel. I deal with people like that all the time.'

Of that, he was completely certain. Whenever he got the balls to watch her at work, flashing her fake smile, it was always total douchebags she was dealing with. 'Oh, so, uh... the Marriot, Hilton?'

'The Lux Atlantic, it's in—'

'Miami, right.'

'Yeah.'

'I know it well,' he said. She had absolutely no idea how well he knew it—he was willing to bet he knew more about that building than she did. 'So, you're on this, uh—'

'Very delayed flight to Miami, yeah. You?'

Ah, the conversation was finally turning to him. The first step in a relationship. 'Yeah, sadly, yeah. You know what? That's why God created the Tex Mex. Best nachos in the airport, and right across from our gate.'

She smiled awkwardly. 'Good tip, thanks.'

He was slightly upset as she turned away, so he stared icily at the back of her head when he spoke again. 'Save you a seat?'

Again, awkwardness. 'Oh, um...'

What the hell was wrong with this woman? Time to regain ground. 'Yeah, you know, that was... I just thought since we were on the same flight... I didn't mean to invade your personal space...'

'No, no...' she said, seemingly surprised at his shyness and the display of apology. 'I just, I have... calls to make...'

'Sure, I understand,' he said, making sure to give her a slight sad puppy dog look as though his little hopes and dreams had been crushed by her rejection. 'You go ahead. Have a good flight.'

'Okay...' she said, and he knew he still had her in his grasp by her body language and the fact that she'd used an excuse rather than an outright rejection.

Security was a bitch, especially because the airport was absolutely packed with angry travellers who decided that it was a good idea to mess with the security officers. Jackson was about eleven people behind Lisa in line and kept an eye on her over his newspaper. She was just listening to her iPod, completely oblivious to anything else. She reached the checkpoint and went through without problem, disappearing to the side. He didn't have much to do at the checkpoint, so as she gathered her things at her station, he went on to the gate and took a seat at the Tex Mex place he'd scoped out a couple of days earlier. Staying in character, he ordered the nachos and just got himself a scotch on the rocks. Although not wanting to appear too intense, he kept a lookout for her in his peripheral vision.

There she appeared and was immediately doused in an iced mocha. She disappeared into the bathroom, and for several long minutes he fidgeted in his seat, blankly eating nachos and emptying his glass. If she didn't come and he wasn't able to butter her up, it was going to be much more difficult to engage her in conversation on the plane. He wanted this to go quietly and smoothly so he could return one of his apartments, he wasn't quite sure where, and just live out his life peacefully. If he fucked this assignment up, this incredibly straightforward and simple assignment, he'd leave the organisation as a failure. When they discussed the history of the organisation with new recruits, they'd talk about his successful Abacha assassination and the Nepal murder-suicide, but at the end, when the recruits asked about what Jackson was doing, they'd say that he failed on a completely routine mission and left in shame. The bartender refilled his glass and Jackson tapped it on the counter before taking a big swig of the smooth liquid.

As he set the glass down, he heard rolling wheels and looked up with a genuine smile at Lisa, who was now wearing a much more flattering cardigan over a pretty tank-top. He laughed a little. 'Oh, hi.'

'Hi,' she said, suddenly sheepish. 'Um... is this... taken?'

Perfect. Absolutely perfect. 'No, it's all yours.'

He watched her sit; she had a beautiful smile, and as far as he could tell, it was honest. It wasn't the same peppy look she gave to all of the customers at the Lux. 'Thanks.'

'So, uh... get your... calls made?' he asked, and she gave him a surprised look.

'Yep, no more calls,' she replied, her wide eyes completely giving away the fact that she'd been lying.

He was displeased with this but kept up appearances. 'Good. What'll you have?'

'Oh, ah... no, it's, I'm okay,' she said, knowing full and well she'd had more box wine in the last few hours than she'd had over the last three years.

'If I can guess,' he said, and she perked up in interest.

'Okay...'

He threw his head back, acting as though he were lost in thought, when really he was just trying to figure out the best winding trail to the already known answer of Seabreeze. 'Um... I'm feeling vodka.'

Even if he didn't know the answer, the look she gave him would have given away the fact that vodka was in the drink.

'Definitely sweetened...' he continued. 'Um... Cosmo.'

'Noooo...' she creaked, tipping her head to the side.

'Too common,' he said, paying her a sleek compliment. 'Screwdriver.'

She made the face just like before she cried, but then copied the face he'd made to her in line and looked over at the gate.

'Too boring...' he continued, another compliment—she seemed dull at first, but the mystery surrounding her odd behaviour changed that—and she gave him a little blushing look. 'So that leaves the simplicity of grapefruit or the complexity of pineapple.'

Now there was a little fear in her look as she stared at him, nodding. 'Hm.'

'Grapefruit,' he said smoothly, pointing at her. 'Seabreeze.'

She gave him a dark look before turning to the barkeep, and he gave an equally dark look because he could tell she was up to something. 'Uh, could I have a Baybreeze?'

'Ah...' he said, and immediately had a sense of foreboding.

This wasn't going to be as easy as he first thought. He could already feel the anger crawling up his spine, the same anger that was usually focused on Lyna, and at that moment, he knew nothing from that point was going to go as planned.


End file.
